Ballroom dancing occupies a large part of my life. As I often think about ways to make connections between that part of my life and the designer part, I wanted to visually portray and carry across to viewers the feelings of ballroom, through design pieces. Some of these pieces were created for the CMU Ballroom Dance Club; others for personal visual design exploration.
All pieces tried to evoke feelings or emotions associated with some or all parts of ballroom dancing without being visually explicit—using a combination of colors, shapes, and type. This is an ongoing project that will evolve as I continue to dance more and to understand more of the subtleties of what ballroom dancing is.
One of the first pieces was created a few months after I started ballroom dancing.
It featured the basic closed ballroom frame.
My first understanding of ballroom dancing was at a shallow level, focused more on the flashiness—the lights, rhinestones, and glitter at competitions. As such, the colors I used were always a mix of saturated hues.
I also understood it at a basic technical level, particularly the frame and various dance positions, and I aimed to
create illustrated silhouettes that would capture the essence of the partnership and positions with as few shapes in as simple a form as possible.
I also understood it at a basic technical level, particularly the frame and various dance positions, and I aimed to
create illustrated silhouettes that would capture the essence of the partnership and positions with as few shapes in as simple a form as possible.
Every dance was different. As a dancer, you had to embrace each dance with a certain attitude in order to dance well, whether it was dreamy or flirty or anything else. I wanted to showcase those moods, so I created a website. Each dance uses one or two colors, along with a carefully selected font and type arrangement to evoke the type of feeling that dance would give off to the dancer.
To reflect the short 90-second back-to-back rounds at competitions, I used jQuery to create a scrolling effect. The content would be kept in place as the user scrolls into a slide, as if it is a group of dancers on the dance floor, entering then exiting.
Later, I also created a video in the same vein.
Spending more time on the Ballroom Dance Team made me realize that ballroom was not just flashy;
it was also incredibly classy. The design style I had adopted thus far to portray aspects of ballroom was anything but classy, so I started to go in the opposite direction, using graceful serif typefaces and soft colors. I also wanted to add a little more life to the silhouette illustrations so they weren't so stiff and digital.
it was also incredibly classy. The design style I had adopted thus far to portray aspects of ballroom was anything but classy, so I started to go in the opposite direction, using graceful serif typefaces and soft colors. I also wanted to add a little more life to the silhouette illustrations so they weren't so stiff and digital.
Sketches of ballroom figures took over many pages of my sketchbook.
The Scotch Ball poster showed a change in aesthetic decisions.
The Scotch Ball poster evolved in the second year to have a more pronounced formal feel.
Some events still require the excitement from the bright colors. The past posters mostly revolved around a dancing figure illustration, so I wanted to try something a little less illustration-based. I tried to elicit that fun, exciting mood of the Ballroom Rush event through subtle shifts in color on blocks of the background, complemented with a diagonal stripe that suggested a spotlight.
As for general fall/spring lessons posters, I sought to create a more generic design that could be reused with different colors.
Ballroom is something filled with emotion and mood, and I'm constantly trying to find better ways of creating a visual experience of it. Hence this ongoing project!
