For this piece I was tasked with creating a composition using only cutouts from pictures that I had. Going through all of my old photo albums I knew I wanted to tell a story of my life growing up and shaped who I am today. One of the first things that people always notice about me is my Steelers hat and they always ask how I became a fan given that I live in the east coast of New York and Boston teams. I then explain to them that I was born a Steelers fan through my family and have been going to games in Pittsburgh since I was 6 years old. Over the years some of my fondest memories and strongest friendships have come from my life as a Steelers fan, and I wanted to show that through this composition which really began 21 years ago when I was born.
Robin Landa in her book Graphic Design Solutions defines composing as how you put all the components parts together and the visual organization of the type and images in a graphic spatial arrangement. And if this piece taught me anything its that composition can either make or break a piece depending on how you organize the images in relation to each other. Laying out the piece I decided to start with a background picture of Heinz Field which I had numerous pictures of on my phone from past trips. I then laid out and organized all of the pictures I had over the years of trips and events to select and layer on the middle and foreground.
At the time I did not know how I wanted to organize them except that I wanted my baby picture at the midline to draw people’s attention to it first. I then placed the other pictures around it and layered them either over or under the other elements to create a sense of depth and flow around the midline to help it not become too overwhelming. Some of the selections I had issues of the frame edges creating angles on the pictures, so I placed them in the corners. The ones I couldn’t place in the corners I added an elliptical marquee and centered them horizontally.
I wanted to create a symmetrical composition as Robin Landa explains in Graphic Design Solutions, so I kept a pattern of three in the piece, given the Steelers logo has three colors for coal, iron, and steel. Even with all the pictures of me and my family at games and with players like Ben Roethlisberger and Franco Harris I still felt something was missing. So I decided to add in pictures of my Steelers tickets which I’ve collected over the years and placed them in the background lined up almost like banners. I decided to add a transparency to the tickets to create a sense of depth. I then added a rectangular layer behind each of them with a corresponding color (yellow, red, and blue) to coincide with the Steelers logo.
Works Cited
Hedland, Frode. “A Brief History of Information.” A Brief History Of Information, Liquid Information, 2001, www.liquidinformation.org/information_history.html.
Landa, Robin. Graphic Design Solutions. Cengage, 2019.
Skjoldborg Madsen, Rune. “A History of Design Systems.” Intro Lecture, printingcode.runemadsen.com/lecture-intro/.
Hi, Bret! I really like how you had a central theme of the Steelers in the piece that helps tell the story of how you grew up. The piece is very symmetrical (which is very appealing to me) and the baby picture of you at the center draws my eye and signals the beginning of everything (to me). Also, the tickets as banners were definitely a nice touch and added some more depth to the composition.
As a new idea, you said you wanted this to tell the story of how you grew up, so I was thinking you could start with the baby picture of you in the middle, then add some photos of you as a child around that, and then some picture of you now on the edges (if that makes sense). To me, this would show you growing up through the years.
Nicely done!
Bret,
I couldn’t think of anything better to compose who you are and what The Steelers mean to you! This overall composition is amazing in compiling endless aspects of the sport and the team that relate to you specifically and your experience. I love the central pillars of the tickets placed on the stadium background.
The images that you added on top of that with I’m assuming you and various players/coaches/friends/family really makes this piece yours adding a personal touch. I really liked how you took the three photos under each ticket and gave them a circular kind of cut. I thought that was a unique touch.
Overall great composition, go Steelers!