For my designblitz, I was able to find graphic design in the most mundane things. At first I wasn’t sure where to look to take my pictures and I found they caught my eye when I was not looking for them. Once I had taken the following photos, I found they fit the criteria for multiple design elements so I had to choose the most prominent.

Typography: My first photo, the cupcakes, are from my roommates birthday this past week. What first stood out to me about them was the large cursive 20’s written on the icing. The swirly writing seemed simple since it was just white, but the background illuminated the lettering. The letters stood out because they were written on top of bright green icing and covered in glitter. Definitely unusual for cupcakes. The combination of green icing, cursive, and glitter made the typography effective.

Dominance: The second photo is my house key. At first I thought the best design element was form and function, but I ended up choosing dominance. I chose dominance because when looking at the key, my eye always goes first to the dog. It’s painted on the largest surface of the key and the dark coloring of the nose always catches my eye. It is not until I’m done looking at the dog that I notice the background. To this day I can’t determine if the background is water and a dock or clouds and a backyard deck. In the case of my key, the designer effectively used the element of dominance.

Color (monochromatic): The third picture is oddly enough my bathroom wall. The color, or lack of it, is what caught my eye. When I think of the design element of color, my mind first goes to a myriad of colors all smushed together. But I thought that a monochromatic picture could be just as effective as an extremely colorful one. The tiling on my wall is not the best design/installation but I learned something from it: color choice can be very simple and look much better than many different ones put together.

Unity: The last photo is of my shoes. I chose unity because it is the relationship between the parts and the whole of a design. If my sneaker were to be plain white, they would be pretty and visually appealing. Yet I probably wouldn’t have bought them. But with the inclusion of bright pops of color, there was no way I wasn’t buying these shoes. Therefore, it took the small parts to tie together the whole shoe. Nike effectively combined the white and neon colors to market a shoe that someone who is picky about fashion (me) would buy.