In reading the Mini-Course in Design Principles I found that the discussion around using the idea of tension to communicate design principles to be fascinating. The author, Rob Roy Kelly provides numerous examples to demonstrate his line of thinking, with utilizing an exercise based around the red ball, and observing how students come up with creative solutions to it. Having already had personal experience with design, I found his explanation on utilizing the confinements of the black square activity to be very resonant with my own design thinking. When I was completing the task, I would often think about various scenarios in the real world that I could communicate using the squares, and how those squares can be developed in a way that my audience could interpret multiple meanings. This further confirms my own personal design philosophy on designing for multiple perspectives, and, in the future, I will likely utilize the black square activity as a warmup exercise in graphic design in order to help confine myself to some of the restraints that may be presented in a future brief.
Having completed some of my initial exploration and reading the mini-course, I began exploring my ideas at a deeper level. This manifested in a large quantity of sketches where I would draw whatever forms I felt communicated my ideas of ‘dream’. I wasn’t too focused on creating detailed sketches, rather, developing conceptual forms that could be explored with room for iteration. Drawing my inspiration from material in Bloodborne and Aboriginal, I focused throughout my sketches on having smooth round lines. I wanted to explore in my concepts how using basic lining could translate into certain feelings, similar to how in a lot of ‘hypnosis’ material it draws your attention to certain points. Throughout my concepts I focused on particular principles, such as using pattern and repetition in some icons to help create points of interest and draw the audiences attention to those points. I drew direct inspiration from the Cloud 9 icon, and the idea of infinity within a Kraken’s mouth. While some of my concepts are quite abstract in their shape, I felt comfortable in exploring some of those ideas as they could be used as a point of reference in deeper development in the coming stages of my design. Such as the centipede taking some basic elements of pattern and repetition to make a feeling of nightmare and discomfort through it’s linework. In developing a wide pool of concepts that aren’t cohesive outside of the basic theme, even ideas that might not make it through, could potentially find their way into the final designs as some of them might carry unique ideas that I felt could be developed further.
Lighting Up Your week 