Developed Randomiser Design

To continue developing the Randomiser, based on my reflection in the last post on the subject, I will now experiment with using the tool to display a random selection of grouped components. The aim of doing this is to increase the occurrences of components intersecting with the hope that this creates forms that, though randomly generated, will be easier to perceive as letterforms.

The coding of the tool will remain the same while I focus on the creation of the combined components to be used as assets.

New Art Board

For these designs I standardised my artboard in Illustrator to be 432px x 432px so that all the files created would be the same size. This allows it to be split into a 6×6 grid of 72px squares. These squares can be subdivided into a further 6×6 square. A grid that is a multiple of 6 is favourable to a grid made of multiples of 5 as the grid based on 6 can be subdivided more times. This should allow for components to align with various grid lines as shown below.

Grid divided into 3 x 3 modules shows how non-symmetrical characters can be created
Grid divided into 2 x 2 modules shows how symmetrical characters can be created
Collection of components to be used to create the assets for the developed Randomiser. All are scaled to be proportional to each other.
My initial selection of 100 different compositions to be combined.

With 100 different compositions created I now had to upload them to the webspace and them reference them in the p5 sketch, for the previous examples that used 12 assets I hand typed these values. To speed up this process I generated a spreadsheet in google sheets, duplicated the data I needed surrounding the file name and then exported the sheet as a tsv file (tab separated value file). This plain text file could then be edited easily to correct any format inconsistencies.

The first test of the sketch running 8 times
Second test, I’ve added another canvas so that it forms a grid of 3×3 so that the screen recording is easier to share on instagram.
A selection of successful forms created in the first few tests.

Reflection on current prototype

Overall I am very excited by the prospects of developing this tool further. The initial tests have produced some dynamic and interesting forms. If I have the time I may rework some of the unsuccessful components such as the separate serifs as I think in this iteration of the tool they often end up floating as disconnected parts. But overall my push now will be to refine some of the layout and design problems as identified below:

  • Add more colours to the background
  • bring size of components down slightly to keep edges crisp as on some they are displaying pixelated
  • Investigate adding an optional ODD Foundry logo in the lower corner when exported.
  • Restyle buttons and perhaps change them to icons