Week 1: Design Analysis

ITP is Artists becoming Engineers, and Engineers becoming Artists

This is really my first attempt to look at things I like with more of an attention to design patterns. An engineer practicing the eye of an artist.

Tycho’s Epoch Poster

I love Tycho and the simplicity of style and minimalism that is at the core of his music (and art). A burgeoning and well-known ambient musician, I first really fell in love with his work listening to his Burning Man: Sunrise DJ Sets on Soundcloud. What I find interesting is how well his music complements sunrise and sunsets, and I found it surprising that the covers to his two most recent albums also have a strong emphasis on the sun’s movements! Below is a concert poster that remixes the cover for his latest album, Epoch.

The original poster is elegantly simple, using plenty of solid colors with strong lines accentuating the rising (or arguably setting) sun and the horizon underneath.

A Look at Grids

Coming with a design background strongly based in web, my natural inclination is to analyze the poster on an even-numbered grid as seen above. Part of my inclination is that the pixel math suggested it:

From the grid, you see a few deliberate design decisions emerge, such as the bottom of the sun being exactly on the composition’s center line. Yet, after some thought you realize the pattern doesn’t fit our chosen grid well.

You start to see stronger patterns emerge when breaking the poster down into a 3-based grid.

A Look at Colors

The colors are also interesting. The simplicity is reinforced by strong, bold colors. The dominating near-black color reinforces night, really accentuating the position of the sun in the center. The other colors are also all very reminiscent of sunrise or sunset.

The color breakdown (generated from http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/color-summarizer) is quite simple. Of note is the dominance of 60% near-black, which hammers home the fit of the 3-based grid.