Statement

This project is meant to be visualization-based composition to make a unique Greeting card based on our own abstractions of natural images.

Ideation

our professor assigned us to take pictures of various natural forms and then abstract those forms into more basic shapes to make them into patterns.

For the pictures that We were assigned to take, I decided to focus on rocks, mosses, and tree trunks. The abstractions that I used consisted of taking the most notable aspects of the images and exaggerating them. My favorite pictures that I took for the images were the ones of moss and stone. I personally liked how the patterns were complex looking yet simple.

After making the abstractions page I used Illustrator to experiment with the program in making the patterns for the greeting cards. Using the pattern tool I would layer multiple levels of a pattern to make a complex crosshatched pattern. These more complex patterns were a fun exploration of the capabilities of Adobe Illustrator.

At first, I made a simple repeating pattern from Various rectangles, I then made it into a pattern. Followed by making a separate artboard with different shapes like skinny hexagons, then making the fill of the hexagons the original pattern I made. The result is this complicated-looking arrangement of shapes.

After talking to my professor, she told me that having a pattern based on simple chaos as I did would not satisfy the requirements. So I decided to dial back the randomness, and I started with the images that I wanted to abstract. My first image was one of moss, So I simplified the moss to basic hexagons and made a pattern that was the hexagons in a 3D pattern. Following the moss pattern, I also made another based on stone. This pattern was more random than the moss because the abstraction was random polygons. I made a polygon tile and then extruded and made it into a pattern.

After checking in with my professor again I realized that The project was meant to be mainly in greyscale. So I decided to use mainly the stone pattern for my greeting card.

Production/ Iteration

The greeting card that I designed was based on sliding doors. I made the sliding door design based on the process that we used for Assignment 3. I made a net based of of the size of a mailable greeting card. Basing all of my measurements of an A1 card. These measurements gave my project the most sense of direction which allowed me to make the card in a simple and efficient process.

Making the nets helped me to structure my card. The constraints of the sliding doors left little to explore the visual aspect.

I mainly chose the sliding door design because I wanted to combine the envelope with the card itself to save material and minimize waste. So that when this card is mailed somewhere, there won’t be much trash.

I decided to use The stone pattern to satisfy the greyscale requirement of the assignment. However, I had an idea to make a colored composition as well. I wanted to take the moss pattern that I made and put it on top of the card to communicate the orientation and how to interact with the card. The interaction aspect was my biggest worry so I believe this would solve those problems.

I needed to use a locking mechanism to close the doors so they won’t open unintentionally, So I looked at how Babybel cheese packages its cheese snacks. They have a pull tab that opened up the wax capsule, thus revealing the cheese. Since I did not have access to many materials, I made the pull tab out on tape. Considering the constraint, it works surprisingly well.

Conclusion

This was a project that I struggled with. I found the scope of the project confusing, making greetings card is not something that I can experiment with. The constraints of this project were overwhelming because I really didn’t want to make a basic card with my pattern on it. The emphasis on the pattern of the project, caused me to be in some work paralysis. However, I eventually reached a point where I had to begin just making. And this allowed me to break through the paralysis and create a composition. This project was one that I didn’t entirely understand, yet I see how it forced me to think like a designer with very confining constraints.