Meaningfull Data Design FIN AL
AS SI GNME NT
Ryan Schuijer | 2016 - 2017
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First steps of the final chapter. This process is about the last project within the minor Meaningfull Data Design. Within this minor, I learned a lot about programming, data and a new way of designing. I chose to enroll for the minor Meaningfull Data Design because I felt that a minor is the final chance to challenge yourself into learning something useful. I’ve always wanted to be better in coding and after a few years into CMD, I discovered that the technical details are not the things that attracts to me. It is the creative, generative side of coding that I wanted to explore. Because data can be a raw, massive collection of numbers, you are almost forced to include coding in your design process. What I expected became reality when I made my first test database of the Romeo & Juliet story. I was able to translate this database into a nice visual that became a story on itself.
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Table of contents Week 1: Exploration phase Week 2: Searching Data Week 3: Designing Data Week 4: Generating art Week 5: Final touch
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Week 1: Exploration phase The plan I made for the final challenge was to make a 2D artwork from the data I will gather from the Romeo and Juliet book. I already researched the book in an earlier project, so I should be able to gather the data faster than before and focus more on the graphic aspect.
Global planning Week 2: 12 - 16 december Visualising data, finding interesting patterns, learn Processing. Week 3: 19 - 23 december Graphic design studies, combining data with typography. Week 4: 9 - 13 january Poster design final, screenprint multiple versions.
Inspiration I came across a wide variation of different graphical works that inspire me. Most of the time, it’s the simplicity that appeals to me. Also, series of work with some sort of consistency across it is something I also really like. Especially the printed
I selected this print because I really liked the way the characters shined with the curve of the paper. Some sort of metallic ink or cut silver foil is probably used.
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Exploration phase
This artwork is generated by the actual songs they represent. A pen is attached to a speaker and ‘the music generates the visual’. I thought this was a perfect example of a direct design translation of something not visual before.
A selection of people who are walking on a trainstation. The simplicity is what I liked about this print. Also the absence of text works pretty good.
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Exploration phase
The plan I made for the final challenge was to make a 2D artwork from the data I will gather from the Romeo and Juliet book. I already researched the book in an earlier project, so I should be able to gather the data faster than before and focus more on the graphic aspect.
Global planning Week 2: 12 - 16 december Visualising data, finding interesting patterns, learn Processing. Week 3: 19 - 23 december Graphic design studies, combining data with typography. Week 4: 9 - 13 january Poster design final, screenprint multiple versions.
Inspiration I came across a wide variation of different graphical works that inspire me. Most of the time, it’s the simplicity that appeals to me. Also, series of work with some sort of consistency across it is something I also really like. Especially the printed
Because this poster only consists of text, I chose it as typographic inspiration. Also, Hansje van Halem worked on this one. An artist I really like because of her great digital work.
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I don’t know what this work represents, but the density of lines and curves is what made me save this image.
Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Exploration phase
The combination of typography and the line work really works with the monotone of this print.
These are three seperate prints. I think that this serie is perfect because of the consistency in form, shape and color use. The graphics are that of Star Wars ships, but it is elevated to highter art levels because of this translation.
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Week 2: Searching data Coming up with a concept was the next step for this project. The previous assignment I randomly mapped the number of words spoken by each person on a A1 poster. It looked nice and it told its own story, but it lacked general design and graphic design. At first I tried to let the story generate its own data. By making simple translations from the excel I hoped to find some pattern or something useful.
This is where I mapped the whole story in characters, in linear colums from left to right. Each time Romeo or Juliet says something, I highlighted their names red.
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An exploration on the previous idea is where I highlighted every piece in the story where a text was written to be spoken with more power. I selected these by letting the code search for exclamation marks. While I liked this direction, it did not feel as a seperate story on itself yet.
Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Searching data
I came up with an idea where I could let the characters define themselves by isolating their actions. By making use of RegularExpressions, I was able to select ‘I’ and the verb following it from the whole text. The result is that a list is generated of every action the character says that he does in the play. Though I liked the concept, I also realized that a lot of data was missed by this algoritm: for example when Romeo says ‘I’ll go’, it
would be ignored. Also lines like ‘O, I am a fortune’s fool!’. I feel like with just ‘I am’ that a lot of context is lost. Also, there turned out to be a project similar to this which was really well executed. It compared different religions and their books in this fashion, where you could easily compare the difference in values because of this translation. 9 |
At this point I started mapping the whole story and make something typographic out of it. I tried to see a meaning behind the visual of the whole story or only selected texts from isolated characters. But it came out as just random text, without story or pattern. Also, in my eyes this all came out as work that I also could make in Illustrator with not too much effort.
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
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Week 3: Designing data With no solid concept yet, I started to became desperate. I could not pinpoint exactly why I was lost. When I analyzed the other projects, I came to the conclusion that it is all in the numbers. Designing data is a game of influencing shapes with numbers. The radius of a circle is number. The width of a stroke is a number. The x and y position on the canvas are numbers. It then occurred to me that my previous attemts to a good idea where mere random selections from the data, transformed and mapped randomly or linear on a canvas. It would not become a story on it’s own this way. So I redefined my search for ideas. “Find relevant numbers and assign them to shapes.” From here on, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to work with word counting again, since this feels really personal and therefore meaningfull. I could count the number of ‘e’s but would that be relevant? I could count the number of turns per character but it would be incomplete data (‘speaking’ is not directly connected to ‘appearance time on stage’). The story is a written dialogue, with frequent monologues. I worked with the data before but I feel that it was no coincidence that I found it. It is because these are the only numbers that are truly meaningfull. I mapped each characters name with a circle around it. The diameter is relatively linked to the number of words the character used. The positions are linear where the begin of the story is top left and the end bottom right. This falsified the data though, in a sense that overlapping circles have no logical meaning. | 12
Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Designing data
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Designing data
My knowledge of coding started to limit my design choices. I could see it in every render I made, it was missing the rules of graphic design. I’ve put Processing aside for this time and brought my concept into Illustrator. This is where I could play around again and started thinking about the contents of the artwork. What text should be in here? What color combinations work? And I selected some fonts.
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
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Designing data
Back to Processing. With the design knowledge now at hand, I started to make the circles transparant. I wanted to see the overlaps. The continuity was conflicting because I ordered it like a book, from left to right. This makes no sense for shapes, so I adapted it to fill from top to bottom.
characters left and right would create noise and does not really add to this visual. By only displaying Romeo and Juliet, I could really move the focus of the artwork on their interaction.
I also cut the other characters out of the visual because the story is called Romeo & Juliet. Putting data from different
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
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Week 4: Generating art With the right visual at hand, I could now focus on turning this into an artwork. Without really changing anything to the form, I made sure the colors were print safe. At the bottom I made a small index and also displayed the source, my name, year and the title of this work. I came up with the name “The Chemistry between Romeo and Juliet”, because that is essentially what forms the story. Also the points where the visuals overlap look like a merging of inks, which is also considered literally ‘chemistry’. And also because of the sheer power of coincidence, the visual looked to me like falling or floating drops of liquid.
Romeo’s words
Relative amount
Juliet’s words
Romeo’s words
Juliet’s words
The chemistry between Romeo and Juliet Data source: Romeo and Juliet “wholeplay.xls” | Made by Ryan Schuijer | 2017
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
The chemistry between Romeo and Juliet Data source: Romeo and Juliet “wholeplay.xls” | Made by Ryan Schuijer | 2017
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Generating art
Next to this digital print, I also wanted to explore screenprinting. This is considered an old school form of printing artworks and is done by hand. The process is very much like the process of generating art with code: “Changing variables will render different visuals.� In the case of screenprinting, the variables that you can play with are the material and color of paper and the color and transparancy of the ink. I selected a few different papers and some inks and during night time, I screenprinted a lot of combinations.
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
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Generating art
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Generating art
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Week 5: Final touch With the minor expo and the final challenge presentation being switched, I was granted an extra week for the final touches. The goal that I set for this challenge was that is was going to be a real artwork, based on data. To get there, I wanted the final work to be handmade, not printed by a computer. So I prepared everything for a final visit to the graphical workspace. The colors that I used for the digital print worked really well but I also thought that the golden ink was beautiful. So I swapped yellow for gold ink. The largest format you can screenprint was A1, so I went with that. I bought different shades of really large yellow paper and cut them to half A1 size. And after all this preparations, I made the final prints. 3 color layers, it took 7 hours for 5 prints. And for the finishing touch, I bought a panorama frame. The costs for this project went through the roof. But because I had a vision for this project, it was totally worth it and I was really happy with the end result.
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
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Finishing touch
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer
Finishing touch
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Meaningful data design - Ryan Schuijer