Designing Patterns – The Perfect Amalgamation of Positive and Negative Spaces
“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it” – Salvador Dali
1. Introduction:
Patterns are repeated decorative designs. We can see find them easily in our neighbourhood itself e.g. window grills, doors, pillars, sarees, t-shirts, dress materials, temples, jaalis (screens), furniture and so on. The visual part of pattern is created through replication of the elements to communicate a sense of balance, harmony, contrast, rhythm or movement. Basically, there are two types of patterns: Natural Pattern and Man-Made Pattern. These types of patterns can be regular or irregular, organic, or geometric, structural or decorative, positive or negative and repeating or random.
1.1 Natural Pattern:
We always observe our nature and surroundings for inspiration of natural pattern designs. We can see these natural patterns in the shape of a leaf and the branches of a tree, the symmetry of a snowflake, the structure of a crystal, the spiral of a shell, the camouflage and signalling patterns on bugs, animals and fish.
1.2 Man-Made Pattern:
These patterns are used for both structural and decorative purposes. For example, a carpenter may plan the basic structure of a cupboard by creating a compositional pattern of lines and shapes. He may develop its visual elements to create a more decorative pattern of color, texture, tone and material across the work.
Here, I am going to describe the selected case studies of patterns which are highly inspirational and demonstrate a powerful use of negative and positive spaces as well as design principles too.
2. Case Studies:
2.1 Story Tailor
Story Tailor is a clothing brand in Vadodara. It is a new business venture started by Bhautik Siddhpura and his wife. Indian stories in the form of Panchatantra tales and others, have been around for centuries and have spread all over the world too. So, They have introduced ‘Panchatantra tales’ through innovative pattern designs on clothes for children. Story Tailor wants to teach the strongest values to the children in the form of patterns.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Here are the few stories e.g. Talkative Trutle, Two Foolish Cats & the Clever Monkey etc. The characters of the stories are composed in such a way that it can be visible from the distance of 5-6 ft. The perfect play of negative and positive can be seen through the patterns. The colours are defined as per the target audience ‘children’. They have tried to capture the ultimate situations to define the whole story through repetition of elements or motifs. Thus, the children can celebrate and enjoy these stories on their birthdays and other occasions.
2.2 ‘SANCCOB’ Advertising Campaign
The following work (fig.5) shows SANCCOB's awareness advertisement of 'See the Reality’ campaign. It mainly focuses on ‘Save the penguin’. It uses negative space to make a point about the decline of the South African penguin. (Image source: www.behance.net)
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
The South African charity ‘SANCCOB’ for penguins uses negative space as a trademark and even within its logo. They used a several remarkable penguin patterns playing with negative and positive spaces. They also promoted a series of posters with similar visual features. This campaign encouraged people to consider the transition of the penguin from alive to dead.
2.3 Shigeo Fukuda
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Japanese poster designer and graphic artist Shigeo Fukuda's optical illusions brought him international renown. Many works of him are black & white, minimal and linear. He always tried to explore interesting negative spaces.
2.4 Jaali (screen) Patterns in Indian architecture today
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
ISCON Jan Mahal is situated in Vadodara and it is recently inaugurated (fig.9). Application of ‘Jaalis’ (screens) has been a new trend in Indian Architecture. In fig.10, we can see the pattern of mango tree leaves and monkeys. I proposed this pattern for my newly constructed house. It is inserted into the entrance door of my house. Most of the jaalis are constructed using patterns. These patterns may have a variety of motifs like floral, geometric, organic, or abstract. These patterns provide us privacy, ventilation, and modern look to the building from inside or outside.
3. Conclusions:
Designing Patterns is not just a repetition of motifs or elements, but it is based on how you play with design principles, grid structures, shapes, foregrounds and backgrounds to make a meaningful composition. In my case studies, most of the patterns are generated through positive and negative spaces. The patterns will look very monotonous and static if not played with it. A combination of Positive and Negative spaces creates an attention, interest and optical illusion which makes your pattern very unique in nature. The architectural patterns are produced with various materials like mdf, acp, stainless steel, MS, wood etc. This kind of patterns can create an interesting reflection when light passes through it. We have to keep certain aspects while designing architectural patterns for application of ‘Jaalis’ (screens). I would like to jot down a few points below which can be very informative who are associated with this kind of design profession.