homonymous-gd4

[homonymous-gd4]

Writing Inititive #7

What have you learned about yourself doing this self-directed assignment? I learned that every idea — no matter how strong or weak — only shows its potential once you push it beyond your initial thoughts. If you settle too early, especially without thinking through your concept, the visuals always end up feeling half-baked. Design needs to be justified. And that justification only comes from deep thinking, connecting things, and trying until it starts to make real sense. I basically did this project twice — once randomly, without much thought, and again from a conceptual angle. And the difference shows. The second time around, I was proud of what I made.

What did you find to be the most difficult aspect of your chosen assignment? The hardest part was figuring out how to carry one idea across different mediums (2D, 3D, 4D, Reflective) without losing the core theme. Trying to make work that matched my taste and stayed relevant to my assigned word — "homonymous" — was a huge challenge. Add time management to that, and yeah, it was a tough one. I was working on an alternate timeline the whole semester. I didn’t realize how long things would take — especially 3D. I spent almost two full weeks designing and illustrating just to get one square folding puzzle right. Same with my 2D poster — I went through six failed ideas before I even landed on something promising, and then it took nine more iterations to refine it. Nothing about this was quick or easy.

What did you enjoy about this opportunity? The feeling of finally nailing an idea after struggling with it. That moment where something finally works — that’s the best part. When my 2D text finally became invisible under rubylith, I was genuinely hyped. All those sleepless nights felt worth it. I didn’t love the workload (being real — I’m a bit lazy), but I’m proud I pushed through and got something I was happy with.

How would you rate your performance over the course of the semester? Honestly? 2/10. And that’s generous. I was severely underprepared until the final class. Seeing everyone else’s work that day hit me hard — the level of effort and depth was so clear. That was the moment I realized how far behind I was. But that same moment also pushed me. I spent the next two to three weeks working nonstop to make sure my project finally lived up to something I’d be proud of.

Hindsight is 20/20. What would you do differently? If I could do it again, I’d start from a conceptual place, not a visual one. I'd let the idea lead, then figure out how to build around it. I also learned how useful it is to talk to other people — picking their brains, hearing different takes. That really helped me build better ideas. Lastly, I’d respect time more. Give myself more room to try, fail, and then refine. That’s the biggest takeaway.

[homonymous-gd4]

FINAL: 2D, 3D, 4D, and Reflective Submission

2D – Hidden Text Poster (Rubylith Print Test)

What appears at first to be a minimal, abstract gradient design reveals multiple layered messages — only visible when viewed through a deep red rubylith sheet. Playing with color theory and perception, the poster physically embodies the idea of illusion, hiding meaning in plain sight. It’s not just a visual, but an interaction — a challenge to trust what we see.

3D – Victorian Puzzle Square (Celtic-Style Riddle Object)

A fully designed and illustrated Victorian puzzle purse that unfolds layer by layer. Inspired by Celtic design, each hidden flap opens to reveal a new riddle and illustration — fog, mask, doppelgänger, and death — each playing on homonymity and ambiguity. What begins as a folded mystery becomes a poetic exploration of illusion, identity, and misinterpretation.

4D – Origami Stop Motion + Musical Composition

By unfolding scanned origami forms and tracing their crease lines, I mapped intersecting folds into MIDI data. These plotted points were then transformed into a musical composition, becoming a soundtrack to the stop motion video that visually deconstructs origami back into its original square — a metaphor for returning to origin, simplicity, and hidden structure.

Reflective – Turkish Fold Book

This hand-bound book uses a Turkish map fold structure to hide and reveal reflections on how homonymy exists beyond words — in cooking, origami, sampling, miscommunication, and more. Each spread explores one idea in a minimal, personal, non-linear way. The final spread reflects on how ambiguity and illusion appear everywhere… if you're willing to look for it.

[homonymous-gd4]

Reflective: Updates and Execution

While exploring different forms for my reflective piece, I came across this beautiful Turkish book fold format. The way it opens gradually, revealing hidden layers of content with each fold, felt like the perfect metaphor for homonymous ideas — how things can look the same but unfold into entirely different meanings depending on how you experience them.

So for my reflection, I designed each spread to act as its own standalone moment. The book begins with a spread defining homonymy, followed by several ideas and concepts I explored throughout the semester:

Origami and the illusion of complexity from a single square

Cooking a recipe, how the same ingredients can create entirely different results

Misinterpretation in music, like when multiple musicians tried to recreate the same melody and it never sounded the same

And a few more, all showing how ambiguity exists in our daily lives — even in ways we don’t notice.

Each spread uses the fold to hide and reveal, much like how meanings are discovered in real life — not instantly, but gradually, through unfolding and curiosity.

At the end, I concluded the book with a simple thought: Everything can be homonymous if you look deep enough. That’s the lens I’ve learned to see through.

For the physical build, I repurposed cardboard from an old dishwasher capsule box, bought handmade brown paper, printed the spreads, and glued everything together to make a hardcase-style zine. The result feels raw, personal, and true to the message — something that reveals itself slowly, just like the ideas that shaped it.

[homonymous-gd4]

4d; INTERSECTION POINTS FOR VIDEO

After scanning and tracing my origami unfoldings, I started combining them to see where different origami crease lines would intersect. The first pair I tested was the butterfly and crab. I marked the overlapping points between the two and plotted them as MIDI notes — just by eye, estimating their positions along a time/pitch grid.

Next, I did the same for fish and crab — mapped the intersections and converted them into another MIDI sequence. Each dot became a sound. These intersections, in a weird way, were little musical agreements between two completely different folds.

I also tried fish and butterfly, but that one didn’t work as well — the MIDI output didn’t sound coherent or musically usable, so I left it out of the final composition.

After all that experimentation, I composed a simple audio piece using the MIDI data generated from the first two sets — butterfly + crab and fish + crab. The final result became this soft, ambient-like track that feels like a calm reflection of the origami unfolding itself.

This track will play as the soundtrack to my stop motion animation, which shows the paper folding back into its original square — a literal and metaphorical return to its true form. The video ends with the music playing over a visual of the crease map, tying the whole concept together: that every fold, every mistake, every transformation, leaves a mark — and when layered, they become music.

[homonymous-gd4]

4D : Experimentation and Ideation

For my 4D outcome, I originally wanted to make a video — I just didn’t know what. I had been experimenting a lot with origami throughout this whole project, and while I had made dozens of folded pieces, I kept wondering if there was a way to conceptually connect origami and music. Like, beyond the visual — something deeper.

The idea hit me when I unfolded one of the origami pieces. The crease lines — they looked like paths. Like patterns. And I thought: what if these folding lines could be translated into MIDI? A kind of mapping system that could convert the physical into the sonic?

I picked three of my origami subjects: a crab, a butterfly, and a fish — each one with its own level of difficulty and its own style of folds, which made it a guarantee that the lines would intersect in interesting ways.

I started scanning each one as I unfolded it — frame by frame. This turned into a kind of stop-motion animation of the origami reverting back to its original form: a square. It felt symbolic in a way. Like decoding the illusion.

To make sense of the folds visually, I traced over the crease lines using two markers:

Black for folds that were made away from me.

Gold for folds that came toward me.

This layering of gold and black eventually let me find intersection points across the different origamis. The goal was to use these intersection points as note triggers in a MIDI grid — each point becoming a note, mapped across different pitches and rhythms depending on its location.

The entire process felt like an overlap between design, music, and data — and it all stemmed from something as simple as paper. I'm hoping to turn this into an animation with audio eventually, one that visualizes both the folding journey and the music that emerges from it.

[homonymous-gd4]

2D: COLOR BLOCKING EXPLANATION AND V1,v2,v3,v4,v5,v6,v7,v8,v9 - Design updates

TURN SOUND ON

[homonymous-gd4]

2D experimentation and redirection

After the blur layering experiment completely flopped, I knew I had to move on. The problem with using blur was simple: opaque prints will always overpower transparent layers, and visually, it just didn’t give me the room to explore or design something interesting. It felt flat and creatively dead.

While digging around for inspiration, I came across a series of posters on Pinterest that used a red translucent sheet to hide and reveal parts of text. The trick was clever — the poster was printed using shades of red and blue, but when you put a red filter over it, the reds disappear, and the blues stand out. It was hiding in plain sight. Exactly what I was trying to do — but smarter.

I went to the print shop to ask about this and they introduced me to something I had never heard of before: Rubylith film. Apparently, it's this deep red translucent sheet used in screenprinting and technical design, with a special substrate that blocks out shades like red, orange, yellow, and pink, while still letting cyan and green show through.

It was expensive, but honestly, the possibilities were too good to pass up. I picked up a roll from Aboveground and immediately started testing. A kind worker at the print shop, Malcolm, really came through — he handed me a bunch of Pantone color swatch strips from their library and let me sit there and test everything with the Rubylith.

I spent almost an hour checking what colors got blocked and which ones peeked through. And finally, I landed on a few shades that worked perfectly. This felt like real progress. For the first time in a while, I felt like I was getting somewhere with this idea.

[homonymous-gd4]

2D: Refining Interactive Poster

After finishing the Victorian puzzle square, I started thinking more seriously about my 2D again. I always felt like the concept was strong — an interactive poster that plays with illusion and hidden meaning — but the execution didn’t fully land.

So I began exploring new ways to approach it. Instead of using color separation like before, I wanted to test if I could use transparent printing layers to hide and reveal information in a more interesting way. Learning from the folding/reveal mechanics of the Victorian square, I felt like I had more direction now.

My idea was to try a double-layered blur poster. Basically, I’d have two short messages — each on a separate layer — blurred and stacked, so that when you view them together, it appears like a single cryptic sentence. But when you peel the layers apart, they reveal two different statements entirely.

On my first test, I made the acetate (front layer) blurred and left the back layer sharp. Didn’t work. The back text was way too sharp and visually cut through the blur, completely ruining the illusion.

v1

So I went back, revised it, and tried blurring both the acetate and the paper underneath. Still no luck. The cyan text on the paper was way too vibrant — no matter how I tried to soften or mask it, it pushed through the blur and destroyed the layering effect.

These attempts were frustrating, but also really useful. They showed me how precise this kind of illusion work has to be — not just conceptually, but in color theory, printing technique, and even paper choice. Back to the drawing board… but getting closer.

[homonymous-gd4]

3D: Updated Design

After weeks of figuring it out, I finally landed on the refined version of the Celtic puzzle square — and honestly, it took so much work.

I cleaned up the image tracing, fixed the linework, and used real Celtic illustration references to guide my color choices. I shifted the palette to feel more historical and authentic, and added an off-white background to recreate the texture of old manuscripts. For the type, I dug deep into Celtic-style typesetting, pulling forms that felt decorative but still readable.

One of the hardest parts was making sure both sides of the square aligned perfectly. Since this whole piece relies on folding and unfolding, I had to be exact — if the designs weren’t positioned just right, they’d bleed into each other or land in the wrong spot. Color placement was also tricky; I had to make sure nothing overpowered the riddle texts or the illustrations themselves.

To protect the folds and avoid any tearing or cracking, I ended up printing everything on thin paper — thick enough to hold the print, but soft enough to fold smoothly. And after a bunch of failed print tests, I finally got the alignment and paper choice just right.

I also made a deliberate choice to keep the back side of the paper white, so when it’s fully unfolded, there’s a clear contrast — you can instantly feel that you’ve reached the "inner" side. That little separation adds clarity and structure.

Finding the right typefaces, testing colors, refining every illustration — it was exhausting, but honestly, I enjoyed the process. It was one of the most technically and conceptually challenging things I’ve worked on, but seeing it come together made it all worth it.

[homonymous-gd4]

3d; Victorian Square Illustrations v1

Before refining anything, the illustrations were honestly a mess. The colors looked amateur, the strokes were inconsistent, and everything felt super unpolished. My image tracing job in Illustrator wasn’t great either — it all just looked off. Nothing felt intentional or clean.

But weirdly, this failed version helped. It gave me a clear sense of direction for what each of the four final squares could be. I could start to see how each illustration could hold its own identity while still feeling like part of the same world.

This was also when I started picturing how circular compositions might work better for the illustrations — something symmetrical and centered. That way, I could wrap text around the circle, add a Celtic-style border for consistency, and create a more structured layout across all four designs. It was finally starting to feel like a system instead of just decoration.

[homonymous-gd4]

3D: Victorian Square alyout design v1

So after I drew out all my Celtic-inspired stuff, I traced the drawings in Illustrator, colored them in Photoshop, and made the first version of the puzzle square. And… it was ugly. Like, I knew it instantly. The whole thing felt super off.

The design language was all over the place — nothing felt consistent. And the type? Basically unreadable. Way too many colors clashing with each other, too much going on, and no breathing room. I wanted it to feel vintage and mysterious, but it looked more like a chaotic collage.

I realized quick:

If the text isn't readable, the riddle flops.

The colors weren’t it — it didn’t feel aged or Celtic at all, more like a kids' art project gone wrong.

So I scrapped the background and started thinking about how to tone everything down. Maybe a warmer, parchment-y backdrop. Something that gives it that vintage, old-manuscript vibe. Basically trying to pull it back in and clean it up so it still feels like me — just... not messy me.

[homonymous-gd4]

3D : Refining the Victorian Square – Enter Celtic Myth & Symbolism

While trying to refine the content for my Victorian puzzle purse, I started looking deeper for inspiration — not just in structure, but in aesthetic and meaning. That’s when I came across Celtic mythology, literature, illustration, and manuscript design, and I honestly fell in love with the whole world of it. The intricate borders, the decorative type, the layered symbolism — it all felt like a perfect fit.

I started thinking: What if I combined the Celtic style with my own themes? Maybe there were cultural illusions or symbols I could pull from.

After some deeper research, I found that symbolism in Celtic culture was huge. Shadows, masks, ravens, hidden meanings — all tied to mystery, duality, and perception. It aligned beautifully with everything I was trying to explore through homonymity and illusion.

So I decided to structure my puzzle square around four core ideas:

Doppelgänger/Twins – the illusion of one being two

Mist/Fog – how perception blurs when clarity is lost

Mask – hiding identity, obscuring truth

Raven – a symbol of death and fate

Each concept became the basis for a riddle-style poem and a Celtic-inspired illustration. I started collecting references — borders, animal forms, knotwork — and sketching out elements in that style. It gave the whole piece a new personality, one that felt rooted in visual tradition but still personal to what I’m exploring.

[homonymous-gd4]

3d; Refining the Idea

After final presentations, I knew I had to fix everything — so I started with my weakest piece, the 3D. I had settled on doing a Victorian puzzle purse, and honestly, it took me an entire week just to figure out the folding system. It looks simple, but the way the folds interact — flipping directions, revealing different panels — is surprisingly complex.

To get a grip on it, I started by numbering each fold and mapping the directions out. Then I made my own grid layout to plan out what content would go where, both visually and conceptually.

The idea was to treat the entire square like a riddle — something that sparks curiosity and pulls people in. When the square is fully folded, you see a short mysterious prompt. Once you unfold it, you’re met with a symmetrical illustration in the middle and four triangle flaps, each with a different subtle riddle or poetic line. As you pull open each flap, you reveal a hidden square with its own illustration and deeper message.

Conceptually, I tied the riddles to ideas that relate to homonymity and duality — themes like:

Doppelgängers – when someone shares your appearance but not your identity

Sampling and interpolation – in music, taking something familiar and making it new

Fog/mist – how what we see can be unclear or misleading

Murder/punishment – how the line between guilt and innocence can blur depending on interpretation

These ideas became the narrative foundation for the visuals and the writing that followed. The whole piece is meant to hide and reveal meaning, just like how homonyms work — seeming the same on the surface, but holding totally different truth

s underneath. here is a first draft of a quick mockup i made, the position of these 4 squares will be squares that will be hidden inside

[homonymous-gd4]

4d: Video showed in week 10 critique

[homonymous-gd4]

Presentation Day

I came into the final presentation severely underprepared, late to class, and honestly just not confident in anything I had. The moment I saw everyone else’s work, it hit me — I hadn’t put in nearly the effort I should have. Seeing their dedication made me realize how far behind I was, and how this was my last assignment as a graphic design student.

I spoke to my professor and asked for more time — not just to finish things, but to actually conceptually rebuild my project the way I knew I could.

Here’s what I presented that day:

2D: The same poster I showed at midterm. No changes.

3D: A board with origami stuck to it.

4D: An audio file I had made.

Reflective: The rough website version of my quiz idea.

It wasn’t where it needed to be. I felt like an imposter, knowing I could do better. And that same day, I went straight back to ideation and started grinding.

Everything you’ve seen from this point on — all the development, the experiments, the deeper concepts — has been the result of that reset. The last 3 weeks I’ve been fully locked in, trying to push this project to where it needs to be.

[homonymous-gd4]

Week 10 – Writing Initiative #6 & Critique Reflection

This week I came in pretty lost. The final submission was due soon and honestly, everything I had felt weak. I showed an audio piece I made using only A and E notes across different octaves to explore musical homonymity — the idea was there, but again, it didn’t hold up without context. Cool to hear, but meaningless to someone listening without knowing the concept.

I also brought in origami for the first time. I was told by my classmates that it had potential — especially the idea that it all starts from a single square and can become anything. That made me feel a little better. They encouraged me to push it conceptually, maybe even go beyond just paper, which was helpful.

This was also when I shared the melody remix idea, where I had friends remake a melody I sang — and they all misinterpreted it in their own ways. People liked it because it showed communication errors in a very real, personal way. That’s when I decided the failed process itself was more interesting than trying to make a perfect composition — and that led me to shift the idea into a website experience instead of a song.

Honestly, these past few weeks felt slow and frustrating. I kept circling the same ideas, feeling creatively stuck. But this critique helped open a couple doors again. The goal now is just to take the pieces I’ve explored — 2D, 3D, 4D, and Reflective — and finally shape them into something more grounded.

[homonymous-gd4]

3D : Victorian Square - Sizing and Paneling.