My Mathmatical Beauty: applying a system to design.

In one of my typography classes at Savannah College of Art and Design we were given a project to typeset a poem. What I created for critique ended up being one of my best portfolio pieces. Most designers try to shed the school projects from their portfolio as soon as they possibly can… I did too, but this one has survived.

There’s something about it that really hits true to the way I work. It’s analytical and yet creative. It obeys the laws and yet breaks them. I really liked the project when I completed it. And even better — my peers and instructor thought that it was the best piece in the critique. What a great day in design school history.

Since it was way back in the days of the floppy disk, I do not have a digital copy.  I only had ten floppy disks to my name so something had to get tossed out. I’ve decided that this is a project that must be revisited and explored. Hopefully it will spark some realizations about why it speaks to me. Hopefully others will enjoy it as well.

Developing the system

I thoroughly read the text as many times as necessary until distinguishable categories present themselves. Then I create character and paragraph styles for each category. Then finally — much like a tree limb being pushed through a woodchipper — I apply the formatting styles to the text. Sounds simple, eh? That is why I think I like it so much. But as simple as it sounds, the results are beautiful.

I love CSS. I love it for the control and the flexibility. So when I started thinking about how I could do a series of these mathmatical beauties — I realized that the reason I love this system technique is the same reason I love CSS. Besides, I do like to find creative solutions from within very tight boundries.

I will be adding examples here in the next few days. This time I’ll be using CSS rules to recreate the effect that once was restriced to QuarkXpress. It should be fun! Maybe I’ll even add some jquery functionality too.