Texture Studies

This was a project that I developed and wrote for the DAAP Foundations Program based on similar investigations at the School of Design in Basel, Switzerland.

Students were to investigate and create a series that explores and communicates the concept of ‘Texture’, using strictly an achromatic palette, over a series of four studies. Students must pay careful attention to the character of the individual forms being created and be aware of any implied visual meaning. Each solution should be dynamic, interesting and elegant. The final series should exhibit a series of four textures, each with individual character from the other, but must each exhibit similar visual meaning across the entire series.

Through a series of explorations, students began by investigating a variety of tools to develop and create textures; beginning by exploring the multiplicity of tools and the marks derived from them. After exploring and creating a vast series of unique textures, students then reviewed their solutions to find a common thread such as scale, shape, density, direction, etc., to then develop as a series of four final solutions that have congruous visual meaning yet are different in character as a result of the defined tool.