Saturday, October 18, 2008

Design class in the City

Here's my final design for the Scale project.

This is the third pass. After the first critique in class, I decided to remove the red shoe in the middle of the lower left side and added more detail by adding the smaller-than-life images of the shoes with legs in color. This adds more balance to the overall design, I think.

The larger-than-life suede shoe brings out the details of the leather material not generally seen by people – the grain, the creases, and the dirt. The same thing can be said about our lives. We see the details of a person, whether good or shocking, by close inspection.

The larger-than-life suede shoe is a black and white photograph taken using a 100mm macro lens and printed on a 12x18 matte paper. The smaller-than-life colored images are cut outs from 4x7 photos and then glued into the 12x18 paper to create a montage. The black and white photo of the suede shoe is larger-than-life and is proportional. By using a 100mm macro lens, I was able to keep the proportions. The colored photos are smaller-than-life and are proportional as well.

The tactile texture of the suede material is made obvious by the larger-than-life size.

The primary element is the large scale. It brings out the tactile textures of the suede leather. The secondary element is the balance that is created by the colored cut-out pictures with the black-and-white photo. The tertiary element is the amorphous shapes that are present in the montage. Another tertiary element is the lines created by the outline between the black and white and the colored photos.


~ral

(The photo above is my final design for the Scale project in my Design 101 class at the city college.)