Exercises/Shape Research
I started off this project by cutting out templates for all my shapes and making a grid on Bristol to test iterations of combinations of line shapes on tracing paper.
I used a different grid from the template because I wanted to be able to just create more iterations with a faster process and I wanted to be able to see more iterations at once when I was creating new ones. I started off my throwing every shape down at the same time and seeing what stuck. 
I then moving to only using one shape in each iteration to limit myself and see what I could come up with. 
There’s a few of these I really enjoyed, and especially liked the more abstract ones, like one of them I created with lots of layers of circles. I feel like the ones with the triangles are also very successful and I want take some of the rhythm and symmetry of those into my final process. I moved on to creating digital renditions with just line again in illustrator. 
I ended up with a lot of renditions I liked, again especially ones that were sort of abstract but maintained some ground and had a lot of movement. I remade the circle piece with a lot more symmetry and texture this go around and really enjoyed how that one felt. I liked the digital process a lot more at this point as it left room to easily adjust and find measurements in a piece on the fly. I moved on to creating compositions with planes from this point, leaving line and using the principles I had learned from it to enhance my plane pieces.
Construction
I wanted to go for more minimalism while still getting that feeling of depth and motion in my pieces. There’s a few pieces in this that I feel are super successful and capture the vibe I was going for, especially the bottom left, I feel that captures a lot of movement. I also really enjoy the top middle, I love how the texture look and it’s very minimal while taking up the whole frame. The top, second from the left really stuck with me as well, I enjoy the depth and contrast that one brings to the table. I really enjoyed the bottom left however, and moved on to making that my final.
I had enjoyed the design in a digital space but once it was finished in an analogue mode it felt really empty and didn’t portray that movement I really wanted to. It was very difficult to cut the circles as well, so they came out very jagged and looked bad, as well as the fact that there’s a seem between the squares so it just didn’t look proper. I decided to restart and reiterate the design in vectornator.
The first iteration was interesting but the triangles seem out of place and they don’t really add much. Number two led me to add the rhythmic rectangles in the sides of the frame which I felt were very additive to the piece, but I didn’t quite love the main pattern in the middle, it just felt kind of off. I got really stuck on the third iteration as it looked very interesting but it was lacking. The fourth iteration is what really started the process into my final as it shares that same feeling of gravity and scale of the final. From the fifth iteration on it was just discovering how layering could really add to the piece and let it have more depth. After I had made this final draft in digital it was time to make the analogue version of the design.
It was again difficult to cut the circles for this one, but as I completed it with a single layer of material, the inaccuracy is much less intrusive and noticeable than the first time around with cutting each circle separately. I feel this design is successful in what it was trying to accomplish, that being movement and rhythm. I went on to finalize my digital version in illustrator and then I was finished.
Final project: Shape Grammar