Thursday, April 29, 2010

Working hard on design assigment

I have not posted for over a week - not good.  I have this pointless aim to post once a week.
My excuse is that I have been working very hard on my design assignment and have been doing a lot of learning with Photoshop and Illustrator.  It has been a case of wanting to do something and then messing around trying to think of ways to do it.
They are fantastic programs but there is just too much to know!!
I have been practising repeat designs for screen print.  We have been learning about a technique called 'swiss repeat', which gives a multidirectional design that will repeat in a block print (one that is repeated side by side on all four sides).
I have also been trying to devise a spot repeat - it seems to work like a logic puzzle.  (I love logic puzzles.)
You have a grid and when you fill in a space, that row and column are unavailable again.

The motif does not have to fit exactly into the space, however, so that you can vary the size and direction of the motif, giving a more random-seeming effect.
Here is an example I have played with, trying to work out how this design repeat works. It is a 7 spot design. (Ignore the grid in the background, it does not relate to the 7 spot grid.)


2 comments:

parlance said...

I love logic puzzles too, so maybe I can be a designer, lol.

Mary said...

Parlance, it was useful for me as I wasn't getting how a spot repeat worked until I saw someone draw the grid and I realised that it is like a logic puzzle. We have to relate things to what we understand. So have a go, see what you come up with.