Research
Not a lot of research in this one!
Project Summary
In this project, I explored the principles of design by experimenting with shapes and ideating new ways to represent them in my digital and physical creations. It started with experimentation and trying to discover new and unique shapes and slowly built up to focus on one final composition and creating something that fully exhibits my design principle of choice.
Exercises
Exercise 1 – Making New Shapes
This involved finding new shapes using cutout templates of three basic shapes: circle, triangle, and square. From there, I began iterating and experimenting with different combinations and arrangements of shapes to highlight and focus on any unique variations found within the overlaps they created.
Combining the shapes within the parameters above, I could trace their outlines and overlaps on a sheet of tracing paper. While creating these illustrations I was also passively thinking about the principles of design and how to evoke at least one in my iterations. An example would be the top and bottom left which I created with proportion in mind. I have a total of 10 sheets of just shapes which, for the sake of those engaging with this site, I am choosing not to insert cause it would take 7 years to look through them all.
Exercise 2 – Digital Work
After I had created multiple iterations of tons of different combinations of shapes, I moved to digital to cement my ideas and narrow my focus down to just four.
My next step was to create those new composite shapes I would use later in the project. The ones above are what I landed on for their interesting angles and visually appealing curves. This leads me to the semi-final stage in this exercise and where the design principles come into play.
Having created my four unique shapes, I moved on to creating compositions using these shapes as well as dots and lines to create two dynamic and static pieces.
I had to choose two shapes that were curvilinear and geometric to use for the compositions and these two stood out to me. I love the visual weight and the curves of the first one and the second reminded me of a space-invaders (or equal to) robot and I knew I could competently tackle the next steps with these shapes.
The creation of the curvilinear “bowling-pin” one consisted of many interlacing circles to create the bases and form the curves found in the area between the two visually distinct circles it consists of. The geometric one was created using a combination of interlacing squares much like these.
The next step was to create physical versions of what I did digitally using Bristol paper and black cardstock. This was a pretty challenging part of the project as my curvilinear shape had some dips in it that made cutting a real hassle and my geometric shape has some smaller and more precise edges to cut out.
Something I easily could have done better was more carefully cutting out these shapes and being patient with them. The shape on the bottom right is fairly disproportionate to the rest of itself and frankly warped in a way that is definitely unappealing. The curves on the other shapes were also far too jagged for the final product and could’ve had more attention given to them. In fact, I went back and redid the top left composition after a couple of days and it turned out much higher quality. Now, it may be hard to notice, but the curves and the overall shape of it turned out much nicer than it was previously. Who knew taking your time and being patient could be a good thing!
Iterations
I had a ton of ideas for what I should do to create a final composition in both positive and negative using only the basic shapes of my choice (circles, squares, triangles) while also capturing at least one principle of design in what I create. I began thinking of the principle and landed on repetition. I personally love patterns and think there’s a lot of innate ability to create all kinds of different designs using the same elements.
My first experiments were with squares and repeating patterns I make with them. After I decided I really wanted to work with this sort of L composite shape, I created more iterations of this and incorporated circles to provide a nice balance of smooth and even shapes to contrast the sharp repeated edges. 
The bottom two designs intrigued me the most. I knew I had to do something with this pattern but I couldn’t figure out what. I began with placing squares into different areas that felt empty in the bottom right composition and adjusting until they were even and in a comfortable spot. I decided my descriptive state for this composition should be “trapped.” but I didn’t know what to do with that but I figured it out pretty quickly. 
The final composition is very maze-like and that fits my descriptive state very well in both the positive and negative versions, so I ended with this pattern above.
Production
I started out by measuring the shapes in the digital copy using a grid and finding the correct measurements. I quickly recorded how many shapes I would need to cut out as well just to reference as I go I had also made some last-second decisions to cut out the circle and actually replace it with another square of equal size because I feel like the proportion of it blended much better than the circle which can be viewed in my final design. 
To cut out one-quarter of the square and keep it even, I drew lines from each corner of the cutout squares, intersecting at the exact middle of it, and then used a triangle to find my right angles and cut accordingly.
Cutting out the shapes was incredibly tedious, but I took my time. Having learned from past mistakes, I would hate for my entire end result to be horribly mismatched and unable to accurately convey my design.
After about 3 hours of cutting the L shapes and the circles, I finally had everything I needed to start gluing. Gluing everything down was a fairly easy process. However, my 8×8 bristol square would sometimes bow and bend after I glued down more than a couple of new shapes which presented an issue. I left it underneath a flat and heavy chopping board to flatten it out again and after about 5 minutes of letting everything settle, it kept flat. I’m a genius. I made marks and lay everything in its place and shortly after, it was complete.
Final Production
