Communicative Shapes
Studio Fall 2020: Project 1
Morewood and 5th, 3:24 PM, September 1st, 2020
After the cars take off at the the green light, there are a few moments of quiet — quiet still being the unavoidable blaring of cicadas— before the intersection gets all filled up again. Between the low grumble of revving engines and painfully high screeches of tires coming to a halt, my ears can barely catch a break. Perhaps its because of this endless symphony of chaos and mechanical chiming, that the cars and intersection feel to me, as impatient and hurried. One of my very first thoughts was, “this is not an intersection I’d want to live by — too busy and loud.”
Schoolbuses, regular buses, U-Hauls, and police patrol are among the dozens and dozens of cars lining up behind the lanes on the four sides. It‘s like an assembly line of sorts, each vehicle coming from all over with their own places to go and faces to see. In as little as 5 minutes, they’ll be scattered again, in different lanes, streets, more intersections and red lights. But for now, they’re stuck mere feet away from one another, waiting, waiting.
The intersection isn’t all machines — joggers, bikers, hand-holders, dog-walkers, moms, and their children, also wait their turn to cross the busy streets.
In contrast to the ever-swirling world of moving machines and bodies are some more faithful and consistent sights. A peeling yellow fire hydrant loyally keeps watch from the corner of the garden, while the trusty blue mailbox stays posted by the crosswalk signal across the street. From above, the traffic lights look over the whole scene, blinking colorfully as they direct the endless stream of cars and people.
Along the sidewalks on all four sides are trees and greenery — the corner of Stever features a little flower patch, and across Morewood is the surrounding lawn to an entire garden. Across 5th, huge heaping hedges front a tall brick building. The green provides some rest for the eyes amidst the almost-dizzying bustle of cars back and forth.
We were asked how we felt in the space — in my case, my response also answers how I’d describe the intersection in one word: hurried.
It felt wrong, almost illegal(?) to be sitting down on the grass lawn by Stever, sketching, observing, taking pictures, while all these cars sped by. I felt like I should have somewhere else to be, somewhere else to get to, and hyper-aware of my stillness in comparison to all the business around me. It only makes sense, since an intersection exists to direct traffic and get people to where they’re going, and I was honestly kind of uncomfortable, but it also made me re-examine something I’d never given much thought to before, something as ubiquitous and “plain” as a traffic intersection.
9/4
Today I took another look at my pictures/sketches from my first interaction with the intersection and came up with a list of adjectives to best describe its essence. Words like “hurried,” “busy,” “fast-paced,” “lively” were among the first to pop into my mind.
9/5
With my list of adjectives in mind, I set out to capture the intersection again with a more refocused view. This time, I went at 10 in the morning instead of 3 in the afternoon, so the traffic was significantly lesser. The weather was much nicer and the sky clearer as well!
Between the clear blue sky, cool morning breeze, and much quieter streets, the intersection almost felt like an entirely different place! Perhaps it was because it wasn’t rush hour when people were trying to get to/from work, but the cars themselves seemed to be a little more relaxed and less impatient as well. It was far less stressful to take pictures and study the intersection this time around.
My impression of the intersection definitely changed after this trip. I’d even go so far as to say I would describe is as “peaceful!” I think the bright blue in the sky also made everything look more vibrant, especially the greenery, as opposed to last time when it was more grey/dull.
Now that my perception of the intersection had changed after seeing it in a more flattering/positive light, I had to revisit my adjective word-cloud. Words like “impatient” and “noisy” seemed more temporary and conditional and no longer as fitting for describing the essence of the intersection, but I also couldn’t call it “peaceful” or “quiet,” having seen how it could get during busier hours.
My solution: to make a word-cloud venn diagram. On the left are words specific to my experience with the intersection on Tuesday, and on the right, this morning. In the middle, words that are true of the intersection from both times.
I thought it was really interesting that the left and right sides had words that were exact opposites for each other, for example: “busy” and “peaceful,” “loud” and “quiet,” “confined” and “open.” If someone read my two word-clouds without context, they would think they were about two completely different places! I think it had a lot to do with the amount of traffic: on Tuesday, the intersection felt very confined and tight because of the endless stream of cars going back and forth on all four sides. Today, it felt much more open and spacious because there weren’t as many cars. The drastic change in the impression the intersection gave off depending on the weather/time was definitely something to note.
9/9
To choose my picture, I considered several things: artistic composition, how much empty/negative space there would be, how well the elements would render on cardstock, and how do-able it seemed (for example, I didn’t end up choosing the one with a lot of extremely thin telephone lines.)
I ended up going with the one with the mailbox and girl crossing the street with the tree hanging overhead. I thought it had a good mix of man-made, natural, and human elements, and a clear perspective as well.
To craft my relief, I first traced the layers I wanted on tracing paper over my picture, determining how/where I wanted to differentiate the different areas/objects and how much detail I wanted to include. I tried to simplify the shapes as much as possible, but include enough detail that it was still abundantly clear what each object is. For example, I lumped the building together into one layer instead of cutting out all the different sides, but included windows to clarify the angle of each building side. With the mailbox, I lumped it together with the cement block it’s standing on, because I thought it would still be clear enough that it was a mailbox. I had done the same for the pole, only creating one layer, but it looked a little flat, so I added another layer for the front-most side of the traffic light on the main pole, and I think it was successful in creating a lot more depth and perspective.
For the actual execution, I applied artist-tac to the tracing paper face-down, then pasted the now-sticky, mirrored, tracing paper to the back of the cardstock. Following my design on the tracing paper, I cut out the mirrored shapes using an exacto knife, and then turned it right side up to paste onto my “final” composition. Since I lost the cohesive tracing paper layout when I cut through it, I had to trace my picture a couple more times for different layers and objects.
I learned that I have to be extremely accurate about cutting straight lines— even the slightest curve or angle can throw off the clarity of the object. I’d say the “weakest” part of the execution of my piece is the windows of the building, because the lines of the windows aren’t perfectly straight/parallel and it takes away from the communication of the building.
I think another thing I would do differently is to make the outline of the trees in front of the building finer/more subtle than the outline of the trees overhead, to communicate that it’s further away.
9/11
To do my greyscale composition, I chose to differentiate the different objects based on depth of perspective. For example, the sky would be lightest (white,) because it was furthest away, and the tree overhead and pole would be darkest (black,) because it was closest. It was a little easier to trace the picture this time, because I had a sense of how much detail to include, which objects I wanted to highlight, etc. from the previous relief.
It took a couple sketches to determine how exactly I wanted the layers. Even though I had a general rule to follow regarding the depth of perspective, I had to think about which objects I wanted in what layer/value, and if I wanted to include certain details, like the crosswalk, etc.
In the end, I decided to go with the one on the bottom, because I thought it would tell the clearest story and communicate the different layers and objects best.
Execution was faster and easier this time around, I think also because there were less objects to cut out one-by-one.
However, I realized that I had technically done my layers “wrong” — the street should have been darker than the trees in front of the building, since it’s closer. Fortunately, I figured I’d only have to re-do some of the layers, so I set out to make a second version with a more accurate depth of perspective.
As you can see, I only had to redo the building and street — I was able to re-use the pole/tree and mailbox/sidewalk layers. However, I wasn’t very happy with my new product! The middle area looked too empty and flat. So, I ended up peeling the layers off a second time and cutting a new piece of white cardstock to restore my first version.
From this iteration, I learned that you don’t always have to stick to rules, but that you can play around and tweak things here and there to find how you can communicate something most clearly and effectively. Even though my second version was more “accurate” in terms of depth of perspective, the story was a little fuzzier because the trees blended together with the buildings and caused confusion about what the space actually looked like. On the other hand, while my original/final version didn’t quite follow all the rules (for example, items further back were rendered darker, and the crosswalk was given a different value,) it told the story more clearly and richly.
9/16
To choose my color composition, I picked up all the different colorstock colors I was considering, and cut out rough “mock-ups” of the different objects I might do and tried laying them atop my grayscale composition to determine which one I liked best.
I knew I wanted to go with a cool color (or at least not pink/red/orange,) because my original picture was very cool and mostly greens and blues. I also considered spotlight-ing the traffic lights yellow, but decided I wanted to have a singular focal point instead of multiple spread-out.
I liked the color of the two greens shown above, but I felt that the lighter green was too “light” to provide significant enough contrast (I thought the color should be of relatively similar value to the greyscale value it was replacing) and that the darker green was too muted and sort of defeated the purpose of having a color spotlight at all. In the end, I chose to do the mailbox blue (although I went back to the art store and grabbed a slightly brighter blue because I wanted it to pop more,) because it was a singular object in the foreground that I thought would be a fun pop of color and create a more interesting narrative.
I also considered cutting a small white parallelogram to add the logo on the side of the mailbox, but decided against it, because I thought it would make the composition unnecessarily “busy,” and it was already clear enough that it was a mailbox.
I think I definitely noticed an improvement on the quality of the execution this iteration around — I was able to make cuts far more quickly and precisely. The building windows were a lot clearer and straighter, and I was able to render the trees and bushes with finer details as well.
9/17
This project was my first time using card-stock and exacto knives, and doing really anything like this, so I learned a lot as I went and through the progression of the three compositions. As I mentioned earlier in my reflection from 9/11, I developed a deeper understanding about the autonomy and license I have as a designer to pick and choose what things to accentuate, what things to omit, what to separate, what to group together, etc. to communicate the clearest story using shapes, and depending on the restrictions of each composition. For example, with the white card-stock, I had to choose which objects in the picture translated to having the most volume, and therefore needed more/more detailed layers in my composition. For the greyscale, I had to simplify large areas and shapes and group them together into single values, and learned through trial and error which ones communicated the space most clearly. For the color, I had to figure out how to best tell the narrative of my image in the most engaging way and capture the essence of my intersection using a single pop of color.
I realize now that throughout the project, I’d developed a sort of rule for myself in approaching the compositions: “simple is better.” I wanted to communicate the image in the most concise way possible, only translating the information most necessary to capture the intersection. I also wanted it to be really clear what each object in the composition was, so that the viewer could immediately understand the image. I think it’s really beautiful that someone might look at my composition (the white one, for example,) and immediately take in what is going on and the spatial and proportional relationships between all the objects I rendered from just a couple pieces of white paper.
Technical-craft-skills wise, I definitely got better at using the exacto knife, knowing when — and how — to replace the blade, and the importance of using a ruler for consistent, straight edges, especially along the windows and crosswalk lines. I also developed a much more effective way to use the artist-tac — I learned to cut out the artist tac to fit the size of the object on the tracing paper, so that I would use less artist-tac at a time and not waste as much of it.
9/22
Today, my breakout room and I discussed “how the design decisions made across the three compositions affected the reading of the group as a as a set.” I thought something worth noting was that some people cut out the same exact objects in the same exact ways throughout their three compositions (only changing the colors of the paper), while others had changes between which objects they cut out together/separately. I think for myself, I tried to limit the amount of layering I did in my second and third compositions, as I wanted to challenge myself to tell the same story with stricter limitations and having to more intentionally simplify my shapes. I thought something really interesting about my compositions as a set is the fact that in each one, the mailbox is rendered differently — in the first, it’s cut out with its little stool/block, while in the third, it looks like it stands alone on the sidewalk. In the second, it’s actually cut out from the same piece of paper as the sidewalk, and relies on the viewer to infer that it’s on top of the sidewalk. Because of these differences, the mailbox almost holds a different weight, or presence, in each composition depending on with what limitations it was made.
