Visualizing Complexities
Our world is full of complexities!
I recently worked on taking complex principles from the BYU Idaho Organizational Principles class and turning them into simple, easy to understand visuals. I choose this project because words can feel hard to grasp and can take repetition and time to understand their meaning. I wanted to show understanding of the concepts we learned in class by showing that I can bring a visual representation to the ideas.
Throughout the process I learned that to simplify a complex idea you first have to understand the story behind the idea. From there I found what was trying to be communicated. One way I did this was by finding a few words that best supported the story and then made visuals that communicated those words.
An important principle that we learned in my organizational principles class was unity. I choose Abraham Lincoln’s famous unity quote, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. This is a popular quote will with a profound meaning. I wanted to give a simple visual to make it easier to communicate that meaning.
In following my process I decided that 3 most important ideas to communicate the story was:
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. House
3. Divided
I decided to combine Abraham Lincoln and house together to make it more simple. I did this by making a visual of the Lincoln Memorial.
I really wanted this to look clean and simple so I found the most important shapes of the Lincoln Memorial, such as
– Roof
– Pillars
– Stairs
After finding the most important shapes I morphed them into a vector image.
Then I put the words on top of the picture.
I then decided to put in the next important element of the quote which is divided. There are multiple different strokes I can use. So I tried to experiment with a few di fferent ones. I decided to go with a more simple stroke so the audience could focus on the words more. The one I found to be most simple is the bottom right
After that I decided to put all three elements together. I had to change the stroke shape a little bit. I saw that the stroke was covering the words so I had to move some of the words apart. I also wanted to try splitting a word in half.
A problem that I ran into was trying to make the words and the stroke look good together. I ended up deciding to put the last word back together and putting the crack through a letter.
After a few more touches this is what I came up with. If you want to see more like this click this link to view my portfolio.
Do you like what you see?
Come check out my portfolio! My portfolio has several unique ideas, I would love for you to see what I can do!!