'Time' Cube

'TIME' GRAPHIC CUBE

Approach and Contribution

Production of a cube with 6 panel designs
Demonstration of design principles
Creative thinking techniques
Sourcing inspiration from different eras

Timeframe

4 weeks

Tools

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign

The Vision

The purpose of this project was to create and display a cube that conveyed a message. The 6 panel designs were each inspired by a different decade. The brief provided a broad theme - time. I narrowed it down to the theme "Mortality is what gives our life meaning". I wanted to provoke my audience to think about their time on this planet and to embrace the life we have.

Research

I began with a really broad mind map to explore the topic of time. Once I finished this mind map it gave me more of a sense of which directions I was gravitating towards.

From the initial mindmap, I made a list of 6 core ideas as directions in which I could go.

Pacing of time: Time can seem to drag on, speed up, or stand still, even though it doesn’t change at all. It all depends on your perspective. That way, time is an illusion.
Timelessness: Some things are timeless because they are important enough to be remembered through generations. This could explore what timelessness means – major events like the moon landing, immortality, links with spirituality, etc.
Timeline: This could explore the lifetime of a human being or even the universe.
Questioning the linearity of time: Time is linear until it’s not. Dreams warp time. This would be a surrealistic journey that makes you question time.
Time travel: If you could go back to the past or future, what would you do? The cube could be a dice used to make choices.
Past, present and future: Explore the associations we make with them – like memories and nostalgia for the past, or embracing the moment in the present

Out of my six ideas I was drawn to the theme of immortality and timelessness and I felt a lot of my other core ideas could support this one. So I proceeded to create another mind map that was more targeted at this theme.

Image Ideas

Concept	Image Ideas
Spirituality	Infinite sky with connected stars Achieving timelessness - warped time - broken hourglass, warped/ broken clock Looking down from heaven, monk attaining nirvana
Love	Living on in memories, Heart sealed in locket Couple with souls bonding from inside them, couple embracing - time stands still
Greatness	Desire to be a star/ catch the stars, aiming high, rocket launching Person on stairway towards a star, cloud bubble with achieving first place Pyramids + mummy in foreground
Present	Jar with precious moments/ memories stored - immortalising moments Choices are eternal - tree of immortal choices Embrace the moment, stop and smell the flowers Present = gift
Psychological Impact	Losing loved ones - ghosts emerging from loved ones Lifespan chart, Endless birthdays, endless calendar Soulless/ soul leaving the body, stagnation - growth chart stagnating at top Flower with wilted flowers beside

Thumbnail Sketches

I designed approximately 100 thumbnail sketches - each of these represented a different idea inspired by my research.

Cube Panel Designs

PANEL 1 - LIFE IS JUST A BLINK OF AN EYE IN ETERNITY

HISTORICAL STYLE	DESCRIPTION	DESIGN PRINCIPLES	METHOD OF COMPLETION
I took inspiration from the 1930s Art Deco architectural style. I felt the patterns used in Art Deco combined with the golden strokes, a common colour of this aesthetic, would help convey the grandness of eternity and how we are just a small part of it.	A visual representation of the quote "Life is just a blink of an eye in eternity". The expanding, limitless pattern conveys the idea of eternity. At the centre is closed eyelid which represents a blink. The inner circle also forms a clock with its 12 divisions showing emphasis on the 12, 3, 6 and 9. This helps tie it back to the idea of how time is limited.	In this composition I used a repeating pattern using lines and curves that are found in Art Deco. The design uses radial balance such that all the elements revolve around the eyelid at the centre. There is also continuity since the pattern extends beyond what is visible in the frame.	I created this design using the pen tool in illustrator. I started by drawing concentric circles and then using the rotate tool to create 12 equidistant divisions around the circles. I proceeded to create a pattern for a single division and then replicated it across all the divisions again using the rotate tool. Finally, I adjusted the stroke weight to emphasise the inner clock and the 4 main divisions.

PANEL 2 - THE RACE TO BE REMEMBERED

HISTORICAL STYLE	DESCRIPTION	DESIGN PRINCIPLES	METHOD OF COMPLETION
80’s Pop Art. I felt something inspired by Keith Haring’s style would be a good fit for this composition, as he creates entire scenes using simple figures, which was what I wanted to achieve.	This design draws attention to our mortality, by showing a clock over everyone’s head to indicate how much time they have left to live. This design create a scene where a number of characters are trying to reach for the stars in their own way to achieve greatness and leave a legacy before their time is up in life. The people and the clocks above them are colour coded to depict the amount of time they have left.	This design uses repetition in the style of characters and the clocks, as well as the dots and lines pattern in the sky and ground There is also a lot of movement in the composition portrayed by the characters actions.	I used my Wacom tablet and pen to do a digital drawing in Illustrator using the paint tool, with a thin stroke. I did my colouring using the brush tool, using separate layers for the background and foregrounds to simplify the process. At the end I used the pen tool to remove any extra bits and make it cleaner.

PANEL 3 - MAKE YOUR TIME COUNT

HISTORICAL STYLE	DESCRIPTION	DESIGN PRINCIPLES	METHOD OF COMPLETION
70s, inspired by the visual design used in the Wheel of Fortune. Due to this design being a spinner on a wheel, I felt this was a logical direction to take.	This is an interactive panel with a spinner made from cardboard, which can be flicked like a game spinner. The idea is to portray how we should make the most of the time we have by choosing time wisely. When people flick the spinner to land on a number, this conveys that they are taking control of their time, rather than being controlled by the ticking of the clock.	I used symmetry and radial balance for this circular composition with different sections. I used contrast by placing high contrast colours close to each other. Repetition and pattern can be seen in the cyclical divisions of the wheel.	This composition was pretty simple and was made using the circle, line segment tool and rotate tool in Illustrator. I added a 3D bevel effect to make it look more like a wheel and give it that retro aesthetic of the 70s. After printing the cube I cut out an arrow shape using a piece of cardboard and pinned it to the paper using a push pin, a thin strip of cardboard and some blu-tac to give it depth. This arrow could be flicked to rotate and land on a number.

PANEL 4 - TO LIVE FOREVER IS TO LIVE ALONE

HISTORICAL STYLE	DESCRIPTION	DESIGN PRINCIPLES	METHOD OF COMPLETION
90s Grunge. I felt grunge would convey the pain and harshness of being alone and give the design some edge.	This design explores the negative impacts of immortality, and what happens if we really do have the power of immortality. I made the connection of losing loved ones who died before an immortal person. I took a picture of a cake and added as many candles as would fit to convey the abnormally long lifespan of an immortal person.	This design uses contrast in both the background and the typography. There is an emphasis on the word ‘alone’ by making it a different size and colour. There is repetition in the large number of candles used. Scale and hierarchy is also present in the typography.	For a grunge style, I began by isolating the cake in Photoshop and then desaturating it. I found an image of a candle and replicated it many times to get the mass candle effect. I added a background by playing around with textures one Photoshop. They also created a shadow for the cake from an ellipse shape to make it look more realistic. I did some research to explore what kinds of fonts are used in grunge posters and then picked something similar. I also added a ‘Happy 2756th birthday’ message to reinforce how long they’ve been alive, using a font choice that I felt complemented the main font.

PANEL 5 - LIFESPAN CHART

HISTORICAL STYLE	DESCRIPTION	DESIGN PRINCIPLES	METHOD OF COMPLETION
Modern era. Since this panel was based on information design, I wanted to keep it clean and modern to let the message shine.	This design also conveys the negative effects of being alive forever, but with more emphasis on the sadness. It uses a key piece of information design, a bar chart, to show the contrast in how long and immortal person has to live. Having ghosts against a blue tinted background adds some eireeness, giving the impression that the person is living with the ghosts of their past.	This composition uses contrast and scale, which leads to emphasis of the main immortal person. This person is emphasised by using the colour black and by being much larger, making her stand out from everybody else. Repetition is used with the ghosts, as well as the people at the bottom to create the bar graph effect.	I looked up modern illustration styles and found one that I liked. I recreated the simple ‘sad face‘ from it while changing the face shape and hair of the main girl. I duplicated her many times and changed the dress colour and hairstyle of each person. I also added ghosts in the background. All this was done using the pen tool in Illustrator.

PANEL 6 - LIFE’S ONLY PRECIOUS BECAUSE IT ENDS

HISTORICAL STYLE	DESCRIPTION	DESIGN PRINCIPLES	METHOD OF COMPLETION
60s psychedelic. I felt this style would work for this panel because I associate psychadelia with introspection and mind expansion. I felt this quote was one that you had to sit and think about after viewing the other panels of the cube, so a psychedelic style seemed like a good fit.	I was looking for a quote that would help me tie my concepts about immortality together. From the quotes that I collected, the one that fit in best is “life’s only precious because it ends”. This conveys that if we were immortal, life would be meaningless, so we should embrace the time we have and make the most of it. The colour gradient gives it a flame-like look, signifying how life burns brightly. The word ‘ends‘ is almost black as it conveys death.	I used repetition in the style of letterforms similar to psychedelic styled posters. The lettering is roughly symmetric against the background.	To create this in Illustrator, I began by creating a new brush type, one that was almond shaped like an ellipse with pointed edges. I used this brush with my Wacom tablet and pen to do an initial round of lettering such that the ends of the letters were pointed. While some letters turned out good, there were many that I redid using the pen tool. I traced a few letters from a poster that I was inspired by, but it took hours of tweaking to get the tightness and flow I wanted. I then added colour gradients.