Collections I Keep Word Map

Typography Word Map Created in Adobe Illustrator by Caroline Tilger, 2020

Visual hierarchy is represented in my word map through the use of scale, weight, transparency, and sometimes even arrangement. All of the collection categories are either large in scale, bolded, full opacity, physically positioned in a way that conveys higher importance, or any combination of these. The collection categories draw the attention of the viewer first because of their hierarchical traits, but because of their close proximity and visual association to the main categories, the viewer is then drawn to the subcategories second.

Being presented with the task of only using text for this assignment allowed me to expand my horizons and to view text as a transformable object, rather than just simply characters put together to form words and sentences. I was afraid I would run out of ideas for creating unique ways to to alter the text as I moved my way down my list of collections, but I managed to find solutions to keep each category and its respective subcategories exclusive from the rest.

Having used Illustrator many times before, I had never known there are essentially two different ways to use the type tool, the first being the click-and-drag method to create a text box, and the other being the click once method which allows you to create a continuous line of text. I had previously been more comfortable with using the text box method, but through this assignment, I found that the click once method was the technique that I ended up using for most of the words in my map, simply because of its ability to free transform the text quickly and easily.

When considering the principles of design, my word map, although quite asymmetric, embodies a sense of balance in terms of the distribution of content from top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Because of the visual hierarchy within the composition, the viewer's rhythmic journey throughout the piece begins with the objects that stand out the most, and then moves on to the elements that stand out the least. There are various types of texture within this composition, ranging from slight texture to extremely heavy texture. The areas that have little texture are due to a greater distance between the surrounding content, using an outline for the text rather than a fill, lighter transparency, and little-to-no layering, whereas heavy texture can be seen in the areas that exude the opposite of these qualities.