My Process

To be candid, I misinterpreted the dichotomies for this project. When it was introduced, I saw it as “Biology/Organic OR Technology/Geometric” rather than the correct “Biology/Organic VS. Technology/Geometric”. Based on that interpretation, my design centers around the “Biology/Organic” premise.

That being said, when this project was introduced to us, and for quite a while afterwards, I was having a very hard time thinking of a concept for this project. When it came time to submit our idea, I thought I would try to go with a (for me) safer option and simply follow a geometric pattern. However, this never felt right to me, so I started looking around for things that were “in abundance” and I could integrate 20 different patterns in. Later that week when I was at the grocery store, it hit me: a bouquet of flowers. There is such a wide variety of them, and I could find/make patterns to reflect every one of them. However, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and make it a little more abstract than I normally would, hence the brighter colors and wider variety of patterns. I played around with flower types, petal shapes, and different angles for the flowers to sit at. To my interpretation, that covered the “organic” side, so I had to think of how I wanted it to represent “biology”. They have so many overlapping characteristics that I was having a difficult time separating them until I realized, I don’t necessarily have to. I can create and use these more biological-themed and microorganism-inspired patterns to represent the make of these flowers while the outline represents the structure. 

On the technological side, I only used Illustrator for the project. While I did use the shape tools a few times, my main pieces of equipment to make everything were the curvature pen tool. I used the swatches panel and the transparency panel quite a bit when implementing the layers, but otherwise I wanted this project to have a more “handmade” feel, so I used the tools that could reflect that the clearest.

What I Learned

This project really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. 20 patterns is a lot to include in a single, two-dimensional graphic, so that’s why I wanted to find a subject that would represent an “abundance” without overwhelming the subject, and I hope to have done just that. I generally create cleaner designs, but it was fun to mess around with a slightly different art style and experiment with patterns. Even though I was embarrassed to have misunderstood the assignment, I’m glad it paid off in a result I’m proud of.