Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
GD 1 Project 1: Black Square Studies
Form, balance, and the grammar of visual composition
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
1-3 (ongoing refinement throughout semester)
METHODS
Analog composition · Paper cutting · Cut-paper arrangement · Progress book · Compositional refinement · Adobe Illustrator · Iterative critique
TAGS
Design Thinking, Design Education, Aesthetic Psychology
Why this project
This project opens the course by removing everything students expect to use. No color, no photography, no type, no software — only scissors, black paper, and a white ground. Students arrive in a design course expecting to make posters and logos. Cutting paper squares and arranging them on white does not look like design to them. That gap between expectation and reality is pedagogically productive. Working through it — and discovering that composition is the foundation of everything they want to make — is part of what the project teaches.
The project is grounded in the foundational pedagogy of Rob Roy Kelly, who argued that theoretical design must be taught within strict limitations of criteria, materials, and format. The limitation is not an obstacle to creativity — it is the condition that makes perceptual learning possible. Dondis A. Dondis identified the same principle in A Primer of Visual Literacy: before students can communicate visually, they must first acquire the grammar of seeing. The black square studies are that grammar. The project was placed first in the sequence in Spring 2026, specifically because earlier projects beginning with photography allowed students to default to subject matter rather than form.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Using only black squares on white ground — in a variety of sizes — create five separate compositions. Each composition must make one thing visible: a single compositional quality. The squares are your only material. The white is not empty space waiting to be filled — it is an active element in every composition you make.
This is a refinement problem. You will not make one composition per study and move on. You will arrange, step back, reconsider, rearrange, and refine. The learning happens in that process — not in the final arrangement. There is always another interpretation.
You will work on all five studies across the semester, returning to them as your eye develops. The critique is a scheduled moment to discuss your work in progress — not the endpoint. Refinement continues after.
DELIVERABLE
Procress book: working record of all arrangements, maintained and refined throughout the semester
5 analog compositions on 8.5" × 8.5" white card stock, hand-cut black paper squares, photographed 5 presentation sheets (one per study): 8.5" × 11" landscape, composition shown at 1.5" × 1.5" (left) and 5" × 5" (right), title block lower right in Helvetica Neue 11pt, printed for critique
3 digital studies in Adobe Illustrator: 5" × 5" artboard per study, vector only, black and white, exported as PDF
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
This is the first time I have run this project, and what surprised me was not the quality of the student output — although that was strong — but how effectively it addressed the fundamental gap I had observed in previous course iterations. Students who completed the Black Square Studies arrived at subsequent projects with a noticeably stronger grasp of how composition communicates. They had a vocabulary: they could name what they were seeing and making. This project is purely about composition. Without color, typography, or representational content, students focus entirely on how form and white space interact, and how placement, scale, and proportion create meaning.
Students arrive in a graphic design course expecting to make things that look like design (posters and brochures). The resistance to cutting paper squares was predictable. What I did not anticipate was how quickly that resistance gave way. By week two, most students could articulate precisely why one arrangement communicated tension and another calm. By the end of week two, students could name what they were seeing — visual weight, tension, axis, Gestalt. They can create with a specific intention related to feelings of tension, solitude, or other emotionally laden words. That vocabulary becomes the foundation for everything that follows in the program. This project marks the beginning of visual literacy. That vocabulary, built through hands-on making rather than solely through lectures, became the foundation for everything that followed.
The physical immediacy of cut paper changed how students worked. They could move quickly, experimenting with placement through very slight adjustments. They could feel the difference between a composition that rested and one that tipped, in a way that digital manipulation does not always make legible. I encouraged students to photograph their arrangements as they worked — not as documentation of a finished state, but as a record of variations, a library of possibilities to return to. Several students commented that this changed how they thought about the process itself.
I allowed rotation to vary alongside placement and scale. Kelly’s original exercises used only placement, but when students worked with rhythm and movement, they needed diagonal energy, so rotation made sense. I am still thinking about whether this was the right call. The process book requirement also needs to be introduced more explicitly from day one — students initially understood it as documentation rather than the primary site of learning. I want the refinement expectation clearer: not that they will make five compositions and submit them, but that they will make five compositions many times, and that the distance between the first arrangement and the last is where the course happens.