What Language Looks Like

Reflection on Designs

                Which designs are most successful and why? While working on the black-and-white designs I felt the strongest compositions were the three pieces that gave the viewer a sense of the word“squeezing” and I like the layout and contrast of letter size. I also the like the final color versions of these black-and-whites the best as far as impact and strength of composition are concerned. (I will post the images of the designs soon) I like the purple/yellow/navy because the colors are a softer, but they create a good sense of contrast – especially with lighter tints on dark background. My other favorite of this composition is the “apple juice” scheme. The mental connection between juicing apples and “squeeze” emphasizes the definition of the word and creates a playful idea with the letters and colors. In the other design, I like the orange background with blue/red scrambled word composition because the colors are playful in nature but with less chroma.

            How your individual compositions suggest the meaning of the word? I focused on using the “e” to convey the idea of “squeezing.” I experimented with the effects of changing the type size to further emphasize the squeezing action. I tried to fill the space with the word, or letters, either horizontally or vertically. In the color formats, I used complimentary colors plus an additional accent color for all my compositions. By doing this, it emphasized certain parts of the word and brought the word forward from the background. By repeating the “e” I created movement and unity in each piece.

How the 9 compositions work as a group to give a complete definition of the word. I feel like all the compositions work together well because they revolve around the same idea of “squeezing” and a focus on repeating the middle two letter “e”s unifies the pieces. The required 6x6” formatting square also helps create the idea of series. The compositions define squeeze through their squished letter “e”s and how the word fits in the space. Like I mentioned before, it was my goal to make the letters touch the edges on both horizontal borders or both vertical borders.