Intro to Computer Graphics Metaphorical Self-Portrait Process

Thumbnails:

 

 

Playing around with proportions:

 

 

Playing around with the arrangement of the words:

 

 

 

Final composition:

I tried to incorporate the design concepts through either the size, shade, or placement of the words individually and as a whole. I emphasized the word "selfless" by increasing its size in comparison to the surrounding words. Emphasis is also incorporated in the aspect of contrast. I wanted to emphasize the word "selfless," "optimistic," and "spontaneous," because those are my top three, in order, so I kept those black and lightened the "forgetful" and "procrastinator," which were lower on the hierarchy. I balanced the image by lightening the words "forgetful" and "procrastinator," which are on opposite sides of the image. I tried to align the image so that the viewer’s eye would travel, or so that the flow of the entirety of the image would direct, downward, starting from the word “selfless” and ending with the repetition of “procrastinator.”
 

 

On top of trying to incorporate the design concepts in my final composition, I also tried to arrange the words individually so that they communicated their meaning. Generally, shy people don't like to be the focal point of much of anything, so I tried to keep the word as unnoticeable as possible without making it completely disappear. I kept it very small and off-center, sitting on top of the word "selfless" which is the focal point of the image and immediately draws the eye to it, hoping that by placing the word in that spot, the viewer will at first overlook it, then eventually notice it once they've seen the other words. A selfless person essentially doesn't think of his/herself. To communicate this, I struck out the word "self" in "selfless." I also took the word "less" and brought it down underneath "self” to communicate how selfless people always think less of themselves. When I think of the word "optimistic," I think of happy, whimsical, beautiful things, and personally I believe the most whimsical and beautiful kind of writing is cursive, so I wrote optimistic in cursive. Spontaneous people are usually fun, crazy, and very unpredictable. I chose the font for “spontaneous” because it looks very random and it was unpredictable; as I was typing the word, I wasn't sure how the next letter was going to look, and I definitely wasn't expecting the "O" to loop around in that interesting shape. I dropped the "t" in "forgetful" to imply that it was forgotten. I didn't want to completely rid of it, because I had already planned to cut the word "procrastinator" short. Procrastinators are the kind of people who "finish everything later." So, I chose to cut the word short and add an ellipsis at the end to imply that time was passing and essentially that the word would be "finished later."