Problem Seeking Problem Solving

I found this image from organizedwisdom.com.
This grabbed my attention immediately by many design strategies, such as unity (by color, and vertical, horizontal lines), emphasis (by color and font size), balance (by position and layout). I think this is successful as a poster of "convergent thinking" conveying the message to anybody, young and old, instantly. I learned about the difference of a designer's convergent thinking(efficient) and artist's divergent thinking(inventive) from this weeks assignment.
The designer for this poster must have had clear definition of the problem and had focused on the final result.

Cultivating Creativity

I have a tendency to like old stuff, antique, or even ruins.

This is a car my father used to drive 35 years ago. "Nissan Cherry" I think the design of cars around the 1950's to the 1970's are awesome. Maybe they are not functional as modern cars, but the more you use it, the more its character will come out.
"Creative people value existing knowledge." we love changes but the lessons from old ideas are enormous.

A pencil drawing from my drawing1 class today.

Texture/ Value/ Illusion of Space

I happened to find this beautiful picture from TheHindiMusic.com. and this was created by Jyothi Krishna.
Looking at this picture I almost feel like it pulls me into this flower field. There are many visual effects are used such as contrast, value, volume, space, and lighting to create a illusion of space. This little girl, the flowers and a couple of the flower cans in the front are in a bright spot. They look very crisp and clear and they pop out to the front. On the other hand, the background is dark, blurry with cloudy sky, which creates the far distance to the back.
I also like the color theme (purple, white and silver) and the composition of upper half and bottom half are very well balanced.

Rhythm / Lines

I found this image from lirtta.com, and this is done by visual and sound artist Jonna Karanka. I looked through her art work and I really like them all.

There are a repetition of lines, dots and patterns that create a visual rhythm. With the image on the left, multiple dots on the three corner draws the viewer's eyes to the woman's face. There are more patterns along her face fills up the bottom right corner. The rest of the space in the middle is drawn curved lines to express woman's words or could be her breath. The woman's arms are making diamond shape which creates a dynamic visual effect.

With the picture on the right, the thick curvy lines on the upper half definitely emphasizes the image in the middle. Again, various shapes and repetition of multiple patterns on the women's hair create the fun movement and energy. The edge of the right bottom corner fills the negative space and the large letters on the bottom left keep a nice balance.

Even though these both images have just one color, I feel so much energy from the lines and rhythm of the images.

Balance

This is a picture of the Byodo-in temple in Kyoto, Japan. I love visiting historical places including these temples. The reason that temples that make me feel calm and Zen is maybe because a lot of them have symmetrical balance. It creates stability and a safe and solid visual element. I like this picture because like the Taj Mahal in India, water reflects the temple which creates radial symmetry as well. If I draw a line horizontally and vertically in the middle, the four pictures are still the same.





This is called "Spiral Building" College of Technology & Design in Nagoya, Japan.

This unique "imbalanced" design definitely draws my attention every time I walk by. Humans naturally seek stability and calm design especially in architecture. However, this is a opposite example of calm, it is chaotic and dynamic design.

I am pretty sure that it excites an art student's curiosity.

Emphasis

This is "Lipstick" by Bertram Bahner. I found this poster from the online store PopArtUK.

I picked this poster to show this week's "Emphasis". I liked this poster instantly, because it is lively and simply eye-catching. Even though the background photograph is monochrome, her skin and parts of the face stands out very beautifully. In addition to that, the pink colored lipstick bring into prominence as a focal point. The texture of tip of the lipstick is unique. How wavy and shiny it is, it makes it look like a 3Dimensional object. Without the pink wavy line, it creates large negative space on the right side and lose its compositional balance. There are three lines on her cheek and on the bottom add more colors to make this even more lively and leave fresh impression for the viewer.

Unity

This poster is from the website called "GURAFIKU". Shigeo Fukuda "Human Rights"

I think this poster is a good example of unity. There are several points that I can see "unity" in this poster. The men are walking to the same direction, (As you can see one man is simply divided in three in different colors). As a whole, there are invisible vertical lines between the man. I am not sure what it says in a tag but these are also lined vertical. The colorwise, very basic. Black background and red, white and blue. The picture stands out very well in a dark color. Now something clicked for me. Don't the colors represent the flag of France? So now I checked the meaning of the tag, and it is "human rights" in French. Duh!

I think this is successful poster to grab the viewers attention by using strategy of unity.

http://gurafiku.tumblr.com/page/3