VISUAL DYNAMICS - Seeing the light

Using only an image of a light bulb, the word ‘light bulb’ and a block of colour of your choice create different designs that explore visual dynamics – as the kitten designs shown in the previous project. Think about your compositions, trying each element at a different sizes and cropping your photo. Your block of colour can be any size, so use it fully to create a sense of space in your composition. Think about layering your visual elements to create depth within your designs and think about contrasts. Use thumbnails to work out what sort of designs you might try. You can download and use this lightbulb image (above) from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gluehlampe_01_KMJ.jpg and work on your computer or photocopy the picture of the lightbulb and work on paper. Be playful within the rules set, creating as many different designs as you can. Edit these down to about 20 designs that you feel represent the breadth of different approaches you have explored.

Composition

A design's composition describes how elements are visually and logically arranged within it. Composition involves the combining of different parts or elements. The concept of composition involves seeing a design as a whole rather than merely its parts and it is just as important as the individual elements that make up a piece of artwork. (Dabner, Stewart and Vickress, 2020)

Hierarchy

It provides a visual guide for understanding how different text elements are ranked in importance. By establishing a text hierarchy, you can make your layout clearer, unambiguous, and easier to read. There are numerous ways to establish a text hierarchy by varying the weight, size and style of a font. It is also possible to achieve a simple hierarchy by using different colours of the same font. (Ambrose and Harris, 2019)

Video - Summary

This YouTube video explains everything so clearly. Layout and composition are important foundations, this makes your work easier if you follow the principals. One of the principals is proximity that shows connection in your subject using visual space. When you keep connected items together, your work will be easier to understand at a glance.

Every composition needs white space. Illustrating sections and separating them allows your content to breathe. Contrast can be created by adjusting or changing an object's colour, size, shape, and visual weight, as well as its text style.

When you use contrast, important items in the work stand out so someone looking at it can follow your work. Having a consistent look and feel for every project is a reminder to keep things consistent. It also makes your work easier to read. (GCF Learn Free, 2016)

Experimenting with contrast of text

My immediate thought was to experiment with all the elements, the light bulb, the yellow block but also the the text. The text can change the feel of a composition completely, in my thumbnails I experimented with position, capital letters, lower case, script, bold and the colour.

Thumbnails

I started drawing my thumbnails and tried to do this in systematic way by trying all sizes, positions and shapes. I quickly realised that I could make up millions of these compositions and started doing more random thumbnails instead.

Halfway through playing around with compositions, I thought that using black as a background colour instead of white could look more dramatic, since we generally use light bulbs when it's dark!

I quite liked the look it gave me, because now I could use a different colour text, but still use my yellow block of colour.

Top 20 light bulbs

I choose these thumbnails from my sketchbook and reproduced them in Adobe Illustrator. Not necessarily for how they look but how I used the different compositions.

Reflection

I found this exercise enjoyable and it really made me think about the endless possibilities that could be created by experimenting with different compositions. However, in order for the viewer to understand the composition, hierarchy and contrast are so important. Making simple adjustments to the text or the size of the light bulb for example can make a huge difference to the overall look of the composition.

With more practice I will learn what works and what doesn't work. It also depends on the brief and in this exercise the brief was open for experimentation.