Finding Truth in Numbers
Numerology
Numerology: Finding Truth in Numbers Spencer Hansen, Thesis, 2020
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Dedicated to my fianceĚ For inspiring me through the project
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, Portland Maine, May 11, 2020 Major in Graphic Design.
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Introduction
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My Work
Choosing Numerology
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A Start
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A Collection: Continuing the Project
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A change: COVID-19
Finished Poster Set
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umbers are a universal concept, and have a real meaning in our world, every culture and time shares the same numbers. And
throughout the world, people have found deeper meanings within numbers. The study of the divine relationship numbers within our universe is called Numerology. This is a topic that I’ve been very interested in, and still have a lot to learn about. So within my thesis I’m interested in learning more and creating projects to educate people on the power numbers have, as well as go in detail of the history of numerology. 3
My Work Graphic design is an avenue for me to create in a variety of ways, with a variety of styles and a variety of purposes. Ever since I was young, expressing myself with visual art has been important to me. Between drawing, painting, digital art, printmaking, etc I’ve always been creating. Growing up I knew I wanted to work somewhere within the art world, but I wasn’t quite sure where I fit in. throughout my college experience I had a variety of interests between printmaking, painting and illustration.
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Design came to me fairly late in my creative search for purpose with my work. I distanced myself from graphic design throughout my years as a creative because of a misunderstanding of what all design could be. It wasn’t until a started a design class that I realized how much potential there was in the field. I saw it as a way to not only express myself, but as a career where I could create experiences that would be accessible to a lot of people. It would let me create visuals that can end up in the real world, not just in a gallery. I saw potential in using my work to help people navigate their way around the world and also get to enjoy visuals that can make people smile or inspired, which is a huge motivator in my work. When designing I see each project from the lense of not only a designer, but illustrator, painter, etc. whether or not I include those specific practices in the work.
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igital and physical realm is important in my process. My sketching process looks
a lot like doodling and visual vomit; quick and repetitive sketching. My sketchbooks are filled with either things that are directly related to the project or more so sketches that are just quick visual thoughts from my mind, either way by the time I fill up a page, I usually come to a better conclusion on how to go about a project. This process of visual vomit is a way for me to quickly find a solution to a design problem that might not be a traditional solution. I’ll often mirror this sketching phase in both the digital space, where I can easily experiment with colors, textures and forms, or with painting, where I can quickly make bold visuals that I can later translate to in my final designs.
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Choosing Numerology
Throughout my life, I’ve been fascinated with numbers and their meanings. Numbers have a long history throughout cultures that shows different meanings and interpretations. For example, I was always so interested in why buildings would skip numbers like “13” in their floor plans. The idea that a number can be good or bad always intrigued me, so as I started my design journey, I found myself working with numbers a lot and that caused me to look deeper into what these numbers I use in my designs mean. And that’s when I discovered numerology.
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Numerology.com defines numerology as “the universal language of numbers. By breaking down the patterns of the universe into numbers, we are able to uncover information about the world as a whole, as well as every individual.� As I researched, I discovered the long history of numerology and all these numbers that have had bad and or good meaning behind them for a long time. I’m curious about finding deeper meanings within numbers and want to explore how I can use that to communicate more through my designs.
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A Start To start the thesis process, first I started black and white poster. This poster was to get an idea of where, visually, our projects would start.
These posters, while didn’t have to completely mirror what my thesis project looked like, I thought it was important to have a clear visual idea to start strong.
The poster I ended on used the outlines of numbers and an eerie light coming off of 10
them. I wanted to use the outlined numbers to represent the breakdown of the meaning of numbers.
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umerology is a very old belief system, which stems from every culture from
every time period, so choosing images for the original mood board was important for me to mix old mystical aesthetics with modern ones.
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I started out some spreads as a practice of how the style might work, I had originally dozens of spreads that I wasn’t happy with. I ended up going back to my final black and white poster for inspiration and chose to go in that direction.
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I tried out a lot of different sizes, I wanted them to look grand and the size itself have a spiritual feel. The posters below were a step before deciding on the final size.
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The size I ended up on was 10�x55�. These long posters would be seen side by side, one poster for each number counted by numerology, which are numbers one through nine.
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A Collection Making sure the posters had a flow when put together, I mocked up a set of gradients for each poster.
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My next step after this was to collect all the information for these posters, which would include me in on how to specifically design each one.
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After finding the size and design of the posters, it was time to start working. No matter how messy the documents get. 18
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A change is coming
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COVID-19
On March 19, 2020 Maine College of Art closed it’s campus to transfer to online classes due to COVID-19. This blindsighted all of us, how can anyone predict that? I knew itd be a big change, especially for us seniors. Thesis centered the idea of the end product ending up in an exhibition. I knew it’d be a hard transition for this project to go digital. Each of my set of nine thesis posters measures 10” x 55” each, which is easily readable on a large wall in the exhibition space, howver not as much digitally.
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After school closing, I realized it’d be very important for me to document the posters good so the details could be shown.
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And so I worked faster and faster to finish all of them in time.
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Finished Posters
For the final posters I wanted to create something that would seem mystical yet approachable. Something that’d encourage the viewers to come up and read more about themselves.
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While there were a lot of bumps during the process, I ended up with a series of now digital posters representing each holy number in Numerology. 43
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