Assignment #1 - Stripping Down

For this assignment, we had to present a visual abstraction of a chosen image to best articulate the image in its most stripped-down version. I have chosen an image of the National Museum of Singapore as I have just visited this museum recently and was in awe of their spectacular light show and exhibits! I was curious as to how I could abstract this image and also wanted to choose an object that was not too simple so that there are more opportunities for abstracting.

Stage 1



I used the Pen Tool in Illustrator to trace over the image and decreased the opacity of the image so that it is easier to see my traced vectors. I tried to retain as many elements as I can so that more features of the museum building could be shown in Stage 1. Most of the elements were straightforward to trace as there are made out of straight lines. However, there were also curves in the image such as the door frames in which I made use of a good tip by my TA - which is to use the ‘shift’ key to create a curved trace.

Stage 2


Next, I wanted to differentiate Stage 1 and 2 by simplification of the existing features of the museum building. I strived to present certain elements of the building in simpler shapes and removed those shapes that were too complicated while retaining the signature details of the building. I replaced lines with a simple rectangle or curved rectangle. I also simplified the windows of the museum building as I felt that they were not necessary for contributing to the representation of windows in the image.

Stage 3


Moving on Stage 3, I felt that it was time to introduce colours into the abstraction. I opted to stick to only black and white, focusing on the contrast between these colours. I made some of the elements in my abstraction to be of black colour by editing the fill of the vectors that I previously created.

I picked black for the windows at the top half of the museum to emphasize the windows as I felt that they were distinct features of the building. I then picked white for the doors and windows on the bottom half of the museum with a black background so as to contrast with the windows on the top half of the building. I wanted this contrast to differentiate the shapes of the doors and windows on the top and bottom half of the building. Additionally, I wanted to emphasize that the doors on the bottom half of the building are entry points to the building, whereas the windows on the top half may not be accessible to people from the outside. Hence, using black and white to contrast will help me to highlight the difference in their shapes, purposes, and positions.

Stage 4

In Stage 4, I decided that there were too many elements in my Stage 3 abstraction so I combined certain elements together and removed the unnecessary ones. The lines on the buildings which were previously represented by rectangles or curved rectangles are now combined into one rectangle per section of the building. This makes it resemble way less compared to the actual image, yet retaining the idea of having decoration details and lines on the building.

Stage 5


In the last stage, I drastically simplified my abstraction by removing any aesthetic aspects of the museum building and retaining those elements that are the base functionalities of the museum building. I also simplified complicated lines into straight lines as the additional bents and anchors were not necessary for depicting the structure of the building. I did that by using the Anchor Point Tool to modify the anchor or the Delete Anchor Point Tool to remove those unnecessary anchors. I retained the signature doors and windows of the museum while representing the museum structure using simple shapes.

Critiques and Feedback


During the critique sessions, my classmates raised a few feedback points to help in minimizing the amount of elements in my final abstraction:
1. To remove the building on the left
2. To remove the additional layer at the top of the building
3. To remove colouring of the abstraction

I have decided on take the second feedback as I felt that the additional layer was indeed not necessary in portraying the museum building. However, I chose to retain the building on the left and colouring of my abstraction because I felt that the left building is a significant part of the museum that should not be removed. Additionally, I wanted to make use of the colours to show the contrast between the windows and the doors, which is significant for my abstraction.

Reflection

From this assignment, I learned that shapes are a great tool to depict things and trigger associations with certain things. Just like in my abstraction, a rectangle was sufficient to let the audience understand that it is a window or a triangle at the top would signify that it is a roof. Every shape has its own meaning and it is important to make use of all these in our designs. Shapes can be symbols and can also represent ideas or feelings. I am glad that I got to experiment with these in this assignment.

I also learned that abstraction through simplification can be important as sometimes having too many elements in a design can cause cognitive overload in the audience. If having 3 elements is enough to convey a message well, adding more elements may not value-add or be considered necessary (or huà shé tiān zú in Chinese). If audiences experience cognitive overload or sees a visual clutter, the design may not be appealing to them anymore which does not serve any good.

Overall, this assignment was a really fun one and I am glad to learn the importance of abstraction, shapes, and symbols via this assignment!

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