Project 8: Exercise 1: Seeing the light

The instructions for this exercise are as follows:

“Building on the themes of composition, layering, hierarchy and contrast, produce a series of designs that explores these dynamics in interesting and different visual ways. Using only an image of a light bulb, the word ‘light bulb’ and a block of colour of your choice create a range of distinctly different design options.”

Firstly, I looked at some of the responses other students had made to this task. They had used a variety of compositions. All of them had chosen warm colours for their block of colour, such as yellow or orange. This suggested to me the idea of the colour expressing something of the quality of light given by a lightbulb. The students had each chosen a standard frame for their designs, such as a square of A4 rectangle, which had the advantage of them being able to make their uniform shapes into an image board. However, it immediately placed a limit on what they could imagine. Sometimes setting such limitations can be a good thing as it helps us narrow down the uncountable possibilities. In a task of generating ideas, though, it seems too restrictive.

I began by drawing quite a number of thumbnails in differently shaped frames.

Initially I felt some resistance to taking this step of drawing the thumbnails because it seemed as though I’d be doing the work twice. However, I soon realised that I could use a drawn shorthand for the three elements of the design and generate the thumbnails quickly. Having evaluated the thumbnails and selected 20 to work with, the thumbnails really came into their own, as I didn’t need to think about what I would do for the next iteration  it was all already laid out for me in the thumbnails I’d circled, so all I had to do was work through the list.

I decided to use a colour scheme taken from the supplied image of a lightbulb. While the warm colours seemed the obvious choice, I took a different tack, using a black colour block to contrast dark and light. I picked up the coffee-coloured part of the light bulb image and used it as a warm colour for my text, which gave me a colour scheme of three colours for my three elements  

I varied the hierarchy of the elements, so that there could be a range of relationships between the elements. In a couple of them the light bulb is oversized to the extent that it is cut off by the frame, but for most versions the bulb is no more than a third of the total area. This may seem surprising given that it’s such a central element, but the task of a light bulb is to make light rather than particularly to look like a light bulb. I used the white areas of the images to stand for the light emitted by the bulb. Usually I’ve gone for fairly ‘quiet’ and balanced compositions; there isn’t really anything particularly edgy or contentious about lightbulbs. We turn them on when we want light and turn them off when we don’t. Their task is simple and they do it well. 

In no particular order, here are my images  

Initially I intended to use the same font for the text in all of my images. I changed my mind because some compositions seemed to need different fonts than others. I don’t have a clear rationale for this - mostly it just felt right or wrong. In some cases I wanted taller or shorter, wider or thinner letters, to fit with the overall design. Some very linear designs seemed to want a fairly utilitarian font, others seemed to have more capacity for a bit of flare. I can’t really explain how I made each decision, but it was definitely a decision process, not just random.

Looking at the images collectively, I like the unity of the whole. This seems to me to be irrelevant though, because I imagine in the next part of this process the collection would be refined and ultimately only one design would be used. It doesn’t matter whether they look good together. Viewed individually, they are pleasing enough, but they don’t really resonate with me as mine. They are too clean and elegant to say anything about me as their creator. This leads me to question how far, when working to other people’s briefs, we try to recreate their vision, and how far we work from within our personal style.