Surface design Project
Choose a word with personal connotation and express it by creating hand-drawn letterforms and patterns using Adobe Illustrator.
Mind Map of myself. I did not do a deep dive into myself in this map. I just focused on what I liked and thought about myself. I did not find words with this dive that I liked.
I was struggling to find a path for this project and so I did another mind map that was more focused on any word I would use to describe myself and things I like. With this dive I decided being a redhead is a big part of me and its meaning encompasses more of me than other words on my list.
I decided on ginger because being a redhead is a big thing about me. The word is an insult that is turning not into more of a compliment. I used to not want to be called a ginger because it made me self conscious but I am becoming more proud to be a redhead. I am bold, loud, and fiery. All of that comes to mind when I think what it means to be a ginger.
My ginger mood board. I like more geometric patterns but focused more on the color. I like the idea of fire and geometric patterns and merging those two into a pattern.
I started with sketching the word. I wanted to play with the descenders of the G's and also a fire influence. The organic shapes is something I wanted to work with.
This is the final sketch for my letter forms. I took the fire influence and made no straight lines in any of the letters.
These are sketches of my pattern ideas. I wanted to mess with the fluid nature of fire and was playing with changing up old 70's style patterns.
This is my final pattern sketch. I ended up not using it.
I first sketched my word in illustrator in gray scale to be able to look at the shapes and be able to find bad anchors and curves.
Final Colors
Through editing my word I added color but have not decided if I like the gradient or the flat color. I realized that the "i" and "n" are getting lost with the fire being behind it.
These are the first round pattern designs. I ended up liking the more flame looking patterns but it still wasn't a traditional pattern.
I edited more or the letters and moved the flame around to let the "i" and "n" breath.
This is the pattern incorporated into the word. The flames look heavy and not organic.
I did a grid pattern and a toss pattern but there are alignment issues with both.
Final
Final Word (Ginger)
Final word and Pattern
Grid pattern
Grid pattern without background
Toss Pattern
Toss Pattern Color study
Because of the free form gradient the big flame and the G were not able to be recolored in that way so my variations are not very different.
