Surface Design Study: Research and Design

Though this is very late, I managed to finalize my images and research process in making this 2D Design in Rhino3D.


Initially, I was inspired by electrical outlets found at the Calgary International Airport. Since I only had a flip phone, the images that I have to present aren't the most amazing, but I believe they capture a raw sense of interest in the world (even if all I have to go off in saying that is that they were taken on a flip phone instead of a smartphone, lol).





Even in the low image quality, I found it fascinating how these electrical outlets possessed different prong structures and colours, as that's not usually standard for North American/ Canadian electrical outlets. They tend to follow the standard of the last image, with a beige or grey backing and holes for the plug-ins. I was mainly inspired by the second image—I chuckled when I saw the indents and horizontal prong. I thought that one looked like an old winking grandpa.

As a first run through of my design, I came up with this:

I wanted to create some visual interest and cohesion in the design, so I combined the horizontal and vertical prong structures in a specific order. Going from left to right on any row yields a smooth transition from vertical to horizontal to vertical (vhv) or horizontal to vertical to horizontal (hvh), with the "winking" half-vertical half-horizontal design as a mediator between the horizontal or vertical prong structures.

After receiving some feedback to create more visual interest and stay true to the visual design of the electrical plug, I came up with this:


It is hard to see on this image, though I managed to add a few polygons roughly in the shape of trapezoids and triangles to add depth to the electrical plug in "faces", and also make them more face like. Here's a close up.

As can be seen, more depth exists in each individual face because of the addition of darker shapes and more visually interesting ones (i.e. not just squares, rectangles, circles, or filleted versions of such shapes).

I can definitely see this design being applied to apparel such as t-shirts, more especially as an accented design on a t-shirt pocket, or a quirky inside pocket design for visual interest. I feel as though by itself it might be too much of a design to be plastered everywhere, and so I believe it is best suited as a slightly hidden design, part of a larger piece. 

(Edit: typo/spelling error)






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