Assignment 2: Abstraction

The second assignment, Abstraction, was primarily centred on the abstraction process and the creation of a pictogram to be put up around NUS. Pictograms are simple images that convey a singular message – for example, no smoking, no playing of ball games. I started to think about the kinds of pictograms that could be put up around school, and was quite abruptly reminded of a couple incidents in the past. In those incidents, we were going about doing our own things as was normal, but upon reaching a flight of staircases, we would find it blocked by people who were sitting on the stairs, talking to one another.

In NUS, not all staircases are wide and are able to accommodate more than 2 people trying to use it side-by-side. And here these people were taking up most of the space of a staircase, and not because they desperately needed the space in any shape or form. They were simply sitting there, on the stairs, blocking the way and being a huge pain in the rear.

I’m sure pretty much everyone has seen that scene from “300”, the one where Leonidas yells “This is Sparta!” and kicks the other guy down a pit. I was so immensely tickled by the idea of merging this idea along with the ice cream idea that I immediately based my pictogram on the combined version.

And yes, that photograph actually contains 2 of me, it was edited using Photoshop.

This was the initial degree of abstraction that I did for this assignment.

However, my fellow students and tutor said that the final pictogram was a tad confusing because it was trying to convey 2 messages at the same time – do not sit on stairs, and be warned: someone may kick you off the stairs. They advised me to simplify it even further such that the pictogram would ultimately be conveying a singular, clear message. And this is the result – a slightly retouched degree of abstraction.

And here we have the final version of the pictogram.

A fun assignment to do, on the overall, although I’m a little disgruntled that I didn’t quite get to use the pictogram of one guy kicking the other down the stairs. This assignment taught me that regardless of how simple a pictogram may seem, so long as it conveys more than a singular message, it is not in its simplest form yet. The assignment also taught me how to better identify critical elements of a picture so that even after simplifying the picture, audiences are still able to identify key elements.