Rectangles in a Square....

“Rectangles in a Square…” My inspiration came from Milton Glaser’s photo array and design elements. I love the simplicity yet uniqueness of his artwork and graphical designs.  I decided to see if he did comparable work besides his famous Dylan poster and since we needed to do this in black and white with basic shapes; I choose to take both squares and rectangles as my two primary shapes, with black and white being the color choices.  I used as a visual reference Glaser’s ‘Baby Teeth’ image as it uses the color design cues I wanted however I had to experiment with different shapes to avoid ‘creating a picture’.

I decided I would go with abstract shapes and have my primary shape be a square along with a deep depth of all black. Using two varying sizes of the rectangles I inverted both the border of each shape and filled it with the color contrast of black and white; Alternating from an all-white border black fill rectangle, to a black border white fill rectangle. Trying to make a ‘picture’ without actually creating one was quite different I must say and sort of confused me as I was stumbling on how or what I would create. I blended and filled the right side of the image with a mesh of the color hues black and white to give it that inverted feel. Breaking up the unity and allowing a clear path is the white streaks purpose.