Calligram Project




 

Calligram Project 

    

    My project is a flower designed in Adobe Illustrator. I choose a flower because of my new interest in botany, specially botanical flora studies. I thought that this represented a part of myself, and allowed for better self expression. The calligram is made up of a letter I wrote to future-self in twenty years. The letter speaks about events and hobbies that I hope I have kept up, as well as; the letter talks about different mottos I hope I have kept relevant in my life. I think combining my new interests and a letter about my hopes for new interests letter in life matched well. 

    Adobe Illustrator allowed for creative freedom when deciding what shape I wanted to communicate my letter through. I originally was planning on doing a hot-air ballon for my shape, however this changed when I realized that it did not represent me fully. This project took around four hours to complete. I spilt the work up into two days, one day I worked on it for two hours and the second day I finished it in two hours. I used different features and tools Illustrator has. The tool that allows for you to write text on lines, is one of the tools I used the most in this project. I played around with different fonts throughout the process, but ended up choosing one select font for the flower. I loved being able to change the color of the font, specially being able to choose a certain color through the text tool. When making the center of the flower, I used the ellipses tool. The petals of the flowers were a little more difficult. I went through and made an ellipse then played around with the shape through the direct selection tool. The curvature tool also was used to make the "leaves" of the flower. I filled the lines in with a lighter color than the line in order to add depth to the leaves. I think the ellipse tool was the easiest to use, and the direct selection tool was harder to figure out how to work. Overall, this project was so much fun to create, and Illustrator is one of my favorite adobe systems to use now.


(Letter to Future-Self)


Letter to my future-self,

 

You should be about 38 now and have experienced a larger majority of life. I hope that wherever you are, you do not regret anything to get to that point. I wonder if you stuck to the medical school route, or you changed to education or the arts. Are you still living in Florida, or did you move back home? I hope that you have gotten to travel across seas and experience other cultures now. Traveling has always been something we loved, so I hope that we have found some new spots that are breathtaking. I wonder who we are still friends with. Leah, Daphne, and Miranda are they still a major part of your life? Currently, at 18 years old, you are a freshman at the University of Tampa majoring in Biology. However, I am looking at changing it to something more specific. Obviously, you know that. Hopefully, you have a great family that enjoys spending time together. I hope that if you get involved in research for a good cause in the medical community, maybe in pediatric cancer research?  Literature is currently one of your hobbies, I hope that you still enjoy different types of books and stories. Books have always been a safe space, continue that hobby please. Do not let the stress and business of life get in the way of having good, long-lasting relationships. I know life is stressful, but you do not get those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months back; time counts in relationships, so make it count. Go on a hike, go swim, play board games with family and friends, do things that you enjoy with people that you enjoy. The world is constantly changing, you never know when the last time you get to see people is. Please do dangerous things because people who played it safe never accomplished big things. In the words of your Aunt Kim, “Life is your oyster”. If you do not step out of your comfort zone, you will never be able to experience new amazing things. Life is all about new experiences and new people. Go out there and find people that are the type of people who you could see yourself being friends with till the end of time. Go out and watch sunsets. I think sunsets remind us of how short, yet beautiful our lives are one earth. So, watch the sunsets every now and then and just sit and think about life with no distractions. Sometimes all a person needs to clear their head is some alone time with just silence. Do not forget about sunrises though. Sunrises show us that we can keep moving forward in our days, “the early bird gets the worm”. I have never had a bad experience being early, so stick with that motto, Stay a hardworking person, do everything to the best of your ability. THe world is going to be mean and rude sometimes, but just push through it. Life can have some rough patches, but just know you can do anything you set your mind to. Stay close with your family. 

 

- Nia Yost












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