Illustration 1: Key steps in illustration- Part 2: Ideas -Exercise 2: Spider diagrams
Create a spider diagram for each of these words:
Seaside
Childhood
Angry
Festival
Try to remember your own experiences of these things even if you have only experienced them through TV, film or photos. Include a list of objects you associate with each word: list colours, use adjectives, textures, and subjects. If you get stuck use a dictionary or thesaurus to open up your word. If you do a Google images search you will find a vast collection of other people’s visual interpretations of the words. Take a note of anything that surprised you, or anything that was an unexpected addition to the list. Test your spider diagram with at least one other person – use a different colour for each person you interrogate and tick words that were common and include any additional words. If the ‘joint’ brainstorm leads you to generate further words, add these as a separate colour.
I began the task by setting a timer for 10 minutes for each spider diagram and began to write related words. I then asked my partner to list any words they could related to ‘angry’ and ‘childhood’ as they were my least filled spider diagrams, I gave prompters like ‘colours, feelings, situations’. The time frame was only a couple of minutes or so. I then made bold the words which were the same. It was interesting to see that the same words were used even in a short amount of time.
I usually create a list of related words when approaching a design task, but the actual act of making a spider diagram and branching off any related words could be more helpful. The diagram shows in ‘real time’ any thoughts that link together which could be useful for finding imagery or testing a concept.
