13 ways
Introduction
Who was Wallace Stevens?
He was a radical, modernist American poet.
He was also the mild-mannered vice president of an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.
Polar opposites! We don’t think of opposing realities coexisting like this in one person as possible. We think: Stevens must have been some bohemian fish out of water being forced by fate to live out some kind of dry, corporate existence while he was sneaking poetry on the sly. But nothing could be further from the truth. Stevens embodied the idea that two seemingly incompatible identities can coexist—harmoniously, even—in one entity.
In this project, we will create a work of Abstract Art using vector mark-making techniques. The marks we make will come from a source as unexpected as the idea that avant-garde poetry can be authored by insurance executives. Get ready for an unexpected journey…
Objectives
After completing this project you will be able to:
- recognize and use the visual elements of point, line, plane and the visual phenomenon of figure and ground
- recognize and use the visual principles of pattern, balance, equilibrium, symmetry, asymmetry, contrast and negative space to create visual hierarchies and compositional focal points
- recognize and use Gestalt perceptual principles and laws of grouping as they are applied to graphic design
- work with typography as a means toward manipulating text as a primarily visual phenomenon
- translate a verbal narrative into a work of Abstract Art through the application of metaphor
- create an edit-safe, platform-independent output file using Illustrator and Acrobat