Digital Rorschach

The goal of this exercise to create unexpected and inspiring new design elements. Be brave in this process. It gets messy and you might feel uncomfortable. Just relax, take a deep breath, put on some music if you have to and enjoy the process. Step 1 - We start in Illustrator Make sure your document is RGB! We'll be going back to Photoshop at some point and we want our colors to stay consistent. Collect some symbols pertinent to your goal, and have meaning to you! You want a variety of shapes and lines Heavy shapes, organic shapes, thick and thin lines etc. Source Illustrator's Symbols Palette Under the Object Menu > Expand and Ungroup Also the Pathnder Palette to remove and add elements The goal is a silhouette like a roadsign, positive and negative spaces Source the Webdings Wingdings and other Ding fonts The OS X Character Viewer Font Variations If Illustrator doesn't show the font, there's a good chance Photoshop will. Go into Photoshop, use the text tool and Insert the symbol. Then right-click on the layer and choose Convert to Shape. Then copy and paste that shape into Illustrator. CREATING NEW BRUSHES IN ILLUSTRATOR Drag the shape to the brush window and the New Brush menu opens. Choose Art Brush. Make sure the Colorization is set to Hue Shift and the Key Color is Black. Experiment with width, direction and ips. Using these new brushes make 12 "Piles" - create a stroke, if you don't like it, undo and try a different method, or different gesture. Start with black, then build lighter values on top. You don't have to limit yourself to just black and white. Add color if you want. Alternate values if you want. Erase bits. Have fun! Don't try to make something particular. If an image comes to mind, let it go. We're after Personality, not objects at this point. This is abstract gesture drawing at its core. Photoshop Once you're satised with your 12 piles, copy and paste them into Photoshop as a Smart Object. Merge it with a blank layer. Now you can continue to paint on it and decorate it some more. I recommend creating a custom pattern brush for more unexpected results.

At a certain point, you can start to build these into forms adding highlights, shadows, glows and glints. Remember, we're building personalities. If its a happy shape, maybe its very glowy. If its angry then it can be ery. Once you're satised with all twelve shapes, merge them into a single layer. Duplicate it, set it to lighten or darken, and go up to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. Now its a hunt and kill method to nd the shapes as they match up. Keep your eyes peeled for periphery combinations that might pop up and inspire you. Copy and Paste these new designs into a separate document and keep working. Once you're done with all 12, turn it 90 degrees and repeat the process.