Saturday 23 January 2010

Moiré aesthetics

These optical…things…are pretty cool to play around with. It’s known as a pattern but it’s not always so, which makes it a little misleading. In terms of creating this effect, you start with a set of reciprocating similar lines and then duplicate the whole thing on top of itself. Et voila. Of course, if you copy the object and paste it in the same way, over and over, you do get a pattern.

Anyway, some examples below show you what can happen and wikipedia has two animations (putting in the effort!) to show the effect at work. It’s one of those funny graphic devices that, by really simple means, makes an extremely complex mathematical process take place. So it’s similar to the kaleidotype. I think I’ve yet to see a good piece of graphic design that makes use of moiré; within reason, it could be used as a letterhead feature, or a device in brochures maybe. One example below, I thought, might suit a sushi restaurant identity. My own efforts are only early tests but maybe I should apply a moiré effect to my kaleidotype! That might give my computer’s memory a little challenge: shall let you know if it crashes.











6 comments:

  1. Honestly, this is all very spiffy to me. I never thought to try any of this. And by the way - what exactly do you mean by monochramatic? I've learned about it before, but I don't quite remember what it is.

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  2. It’s something to play around with anyway. Monochromatic just means one-colour but you can have loads of shades of, say, blue, in a blue monochromatic image. Check out the colour guide panel in Illustrator to see what I mean.

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  3. i love how simple they are but at the same time each piece is so finely detailed as well. the blue one makes me think of a record. could be a fun take on an identity!?

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  4. that would be one heck of a logo yeah. Not sure if it would be any good on a smaller scale though. Could definitely simplify them anyway

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  5. i want to follow phalen elonrichs blog but there seems to be no way to do so? help!

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  6. Oh, you just need scroll to the very top and use the navbar – says ‘follow’ at the top left. Sometimes blogs have neither a navbar or a follow panel…which probably are impossible to follow

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