Concrete Poetry

make a series of 10 pictures of your object in text editing program (concrete poetry)

Concrete poetry:
Concrete poetry is a form of visual poetry. The appearance or visual structure of the poem holds more significance than the content of the poem itself. 

 

My concrete poems

1. My first concrete poem is a representation of the way light is emitted. A particle collides with an atom which excites the electron and it moves up an energy level. It then moves down another level again and the residual energy is let off as light.
Here I have represented each object with the starting letter of its name, using capital letters for all groups with the exception of electrons as electrons are smaller than atoms - so I used lowercase to show this.

2. For my second poem I have gone less conceptual and created a 'bulb' from circles and shown the light emitted by the bulb in rays.

3. This poem represents the filament in the bulbs. The metal used is tungsten, a metal with a high melting point so that it will not melt within the bulb -  I have used 't' to show this. The filament itself is coiled and then a coil is made from this coil - creating a double coil. I wanted to show this using layers so have layered up the coil to create a double coil.

4, 5. For my 4th and 5th poems I looked at my research on bulbs and saw that my research into the use of a naked lightbulb in interrogations could be helpful. The use of a naked bulb can make someone feel particularly uncomfortable, and this can even ben applied to everyday life. You cannot look at a naked lightbulb as it is too bright and will hurt your eyes. I created random paths for these poems and filled them with random characters, from letters to numbers and symbols in both lowercase and uppercase. The odd appearance of the poems with no straight or clear line to read from coupled with the odd sizing and layering make these uncomfortable to look at.

6. Here I have represented a current using a continuous line. The current is surrounded by white space to show light. When the line stops, the electric current is broken, and the light is replaced by darkness.

Armley Museum research

I visited the Armley Industrial museum in Leeds to gain more background information on the industrial revolution and how it affected Leeds, and perhaps be inspired by what I found there. As well as discovering more about the era, I also discovered a wayfinding system while I was there, guiding people around the museum.

 I also was inspired by one of the exhibitions on display and loved their use of icons within the design, which has spurred me to use iconography in my own system.

Subjective from Objective - Blackletter

Subjective signs from objective ones - based on the opinion of Van Toorn. 

1. Create brush strokes in the blackletter style
2. Arrange in pictograms 
3. Photograph/ scan 

Using black ink and a variety of tools (including strips of cardboard, wire brushes and chisels) I created a series of marks, which I then arranged in my sketchbook to replicate some of the hospital icons. I also photographed and scanned the marks to make cleaner versions in Illustrator. 

The system chosen was a set of hospital icons - we had to create blackletter versions of 5 of these icons as well as all of the arrows.

Arrows

Disabled icons

Female and male icons for the toilets

Stairs

Variations on the waiting room icon