A.
Rin Wu
Freedom by Anthony Hamilton & Elayna Boynton
Feel free to listen to this song while browsing my blog😊👇
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
Basic Introduction: “Freedom” is a song from the soundtrack of the 2012 film Django Unchained. The song is a soulful and powerful anthem that speaks to the theme of freedom in the context of the film, which tells the story of a slave named Django who seeks to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner.
B. Concept and Design
Overall speaking, Freedom gives me a vibe of R&B and soul, since the instrumentation features a driving beat, electric guitar, and horns. The timbre of both of the singers is hoarse and rough. Thus, I implement the letter “A”, with a rough-edged font.
(The rough-edged “A”)
As for the rhythm, the drum beat of this song is strong, steady and powerful, so dots, straight lines and sharp edges are the most common elements you can find in my works instead of gentle flows.
(Dots, straight lines and sharp edges)
Besides, if you listen carefully, you’ll find that the accompaniment contains the sound of chains from time to time, which echoes the title of the movie “Django Unchained”. Therefore, I put the two crossed chains in the most eye-catching position in the picture.
(Two crosses chains)
Freedom has a strong sense of story about the brutal slavery during the Civil War in America. Actually, the song can be divided into two parts: 2/3 of it speaks about the depression, hopelessness, and dark side of that time; while the rest implies that though there’s little hope, people still need to strive for it and chase the bright side. In response to it, I also divide my work into two parts: the dark road full of terror and danger, as well as the brightness ahead of the man and the sunlight shining on him.
(The bright side; the dark side)
Speaking of the figure/ground figure, I make a clear distinction between them (namely the road, chain and the man) and also provide a perspective of the road, enhancing the effect of a man running quickly and wanting to get rid of what’s behind him.
(The overlapped place)
And about the Gestalt Theory, I use closure to represent the road, and proximity and similarity to distinguish the chain and the road (since they are overlapped at one point in the picture, it’s important to make a distinction), the dark part and the bright part.
C. Process
Honestly, I had changed my song twice before I finally decided to use Freedom. There are mainly two reasons: First, I really want to design something kinda “hardcore” instead of soft and slow (which is the style of my first two options). Second, I really like this song because of its strong sense of story and emotional intensity, which is suitable to be visualized.
The first picture that came to my mind when I listened to this song looks like this:
(The draft of my first idea)
As you can see, I was trying to use the chain to separate the picture into several parts, and each part contains different themes and elements. However, when I actually began to realize my idea in Adobe Illustrator, I found that it was so much harder than I thought. First, the structure was so complicated that I might not have had enough time to finish the whole picture. What’s more, I could not always find proper letters to compose every element. Worse still, I tried to include too many elements in one single work, but these elements failed to have a connection with each other, making the whole picture look messy and lose focus.
So below is my semi-finished work shown in the mid-critique. I really didn’t like what I had at that time.
（Mid-critique semi-finished project）
But Professor Ian and my classmates gave me really useful some suggestions.
- Reorganize the structure of the picture
- Use another way to illustrate the bottom part since right now it’s too messy
- Should contain elements that echo each other
As a result, I started to make “some” changes by starting all over again…I wasn’t satisfied with my current structure, so I drafted another sketch.
(The final draft)
D. Conclusion
If I were given more time to finish this project, I would definitely elaborate on repetitive elements. As Professor Ian said, the elements shown in my project seem to be separated and have little connection with each other. Thus, I’ll consider adding the dots on the road to the surrounding of the circular light and make the “A”s from the two parts have more in common.
Attached below is my final work. 🙂
