Cheerios Project

Problem Statement: Every object has design. Define the object (cheerios) using Gestalt principles and dissect its meaning.

1st EDIT: In class, it was really challenging to distinguish the Cheerio's many shapes and form. What I visually saw was a Cheerio- a circle with a smaller subset of a circle within it. The color of the cheerio was more of a lighter brown and it had small little holes all around it. I tried to associate the Cheerio in terms of design to help me see it a little bit better. So for the term direction, I tried to imagine designing a cheerio poster. How would I want the cheerio to look on the poster just by the word direction? I could make it look like it's coming out of the page, I could make look like it's moving. I could make it look like it's falling. I could make it look like it's coming out of the corner of the page, etc etc. So this thought helped me brainstorm ideas much better. I began taking the cheerio and stacking it and drew the outline of what I saw to create a different shape. I thought maybe I can use some of what I learned in GPHD 25 with interval and apply it to the cheerios by using color. (Black increasing, white decreasing).

2nd EDIT: I began brainstorming all the terms on different sheets of paper trying to come up with many different ways to see the subject. What helped the most was looking up definitions for that word. I defined all the definitions and printed them out to help guide me with this particular problem. The definitions I found always gave me an idea that I could branch off of and create something entirely new. This time, I tried to get a little more abstract with my cheerio. I kept in mind Gwen's example she used in class, that we can crush up the cheerio, and then we have another form of the cheerio. It's not just looking about the Cheerio from the outside, from what you see. It's also what you don't see and what you are overlooking. For this edit, I tried to imagine designing a logo, what symbol can I create that would illustrate each term effectively? For motion, I imagined the cheerio as a frisbee and drew it out a couple of times illustrating how it would move if it were thrown like a frisbee. I imagined it being flicked across the table. Then word motion itself, made me think of all the different things that's associated with it. Motion of the wheels of a car, motion of a frisbee, motion of a windmill, motion of a baseball of softball. So I took those ideas and applied it to the cheerio and combined them together. So here's a summary of my thinking process I went by for this exercise:

Thinking Process: Think in terms of design (example: designing a logo) ---> Define what is the object (Cheerio) --> Define what is the term (example: Motion) --> Define things associated with that term (example: For motion- frisbee, wheels, fans, windmills) --> Combine ideas and definitions (Example: Cheerio + Motion + Windmill =?)

3rd EDIT: For my third edit, I ended up taking all my sketches and refining them more cleanly on a matrix with a felt pen. A lot of brainstorming went into one little design, I thought I would be able to come up with more, but this project has made me realize that first of all, you must design with purpose, not just draw something and make it totally unrelated to the definition. Second, you have to go through a lot of brainstorming and refining just to get that definition across to the viewer. It was extremely difficult not to edit myself, that was a challenge I found out during this project. I also discovered that there is more than meets the eye when it comes to design. There is always a solution to everything, and it is up to you to find that solution and effectively convey your meaning to your audience.