Concrete Wave
Sometimes when you look through your body of work you can start to notice some patterns. As a creative I believe it is important to ”find your voice” and know your strengths and be aware of where you have room to improve. As I scanned through my portfolio I noticed that I have yet to try out a lot of interesting art styles. Therefore, as an attempt to branch out and improve as a designer I gave myself a new prompt. Explore what you can do using brutalism and futurism as the baseline for a new project!
I intentionally kept my prompt vague. This was more about getting comfortable with a style I had not tried out before rather than strictly adhering to a specific project. That being said as I kept at it and explored more a vision for what I was doing was starting to take shape.
First I needed to know the art styles and form a concept. Brutalism and futurism goes quite well together with bold typography, thought-provoking imagery and a powerful imagery and messaging. Perfect for the philosophy student, I knew that after looking at examples and finding images that I wanted to make something related to the urban landscape and the digital.
The Intent and Process
For the typography and copy I wanted to follow the conventions of futurism and brutalism and to utilize a certain ambiguity intended for the observer. The images have a sense of optimism and anxiety to them, which is amplified but the chosen words, Ataraxia and Panopticon are references to philosophy that has stuck with me, which might go over peoples head, granted, but If they are informed about what it is this may radically change one’s perception of the images.
I played around with many layouts and was inspired to try out a lot of different compositions and combinations of text and images. The words I picked out were chosen to evoke certain mental images and feelings, even if they don’t quite ”mean” anything to the observer. What is a concrete wave? Is it an emotion? A metaphor? Is it positive, cozy and warm? Or is it dystopian, critical and oppressive?
At this point I had created a ton of layouts and looks and wanted to ”do something” with the concept. It occurred to me that some of these could look really cool as billboards and cover images for music albums. I took a screenshot of my own Spotify and made a quick mock-up for myself. I imagine that it is the latest album of an indie band, and the bright colors really help so draw in the observers quickly!
The Results
These are my results, I love experimenting with an art style I was not used to! I want to make more stuff like this, trying to push myself and finding new tools to make new kinds of design!