I’m going to close out Creative Perspectives for 2005 with another example of mapping. This time, I’ve mapped each month’s key event—whether it was very good or very bad. There are five bad months and seven good ones. It’s a very personal event calendar.
2005 - good and bad. Click for larger view
I tried to abstract the most important thing that happened in each month. Some worked beautifully and turned into lovely little geometric designs or flowing shapes.
On the other hand, a few of these are more concrete than I’d like. July was my trip to Beijing. See? There’s Tian An Men, hidden by the red chaos of China. For December, I drew a gallah feather, a gum tree leaf, and one dot for each of the places we’ll be visiting in Australia. I should rework both of these without the obvious symbols.
And some are just poorly done. In particular, May was our Golden Week camping trip to Niijima, but I choked for ideas and ended up with little symbols about nature. They aren’t even interesting. Definitely need to think harder on that one.
As it turns out, the bad months were much more successful as abstractions than the good months. The good months were mostly about travel and places; the bad months were people problems. I find it easier to abstract emotions than places, I guess.
If you were going to draw out a map of your year, how would you do it?
I wish you very happy holidays and a fresh and insightful new year!
Posted by kuri at December 16, 2005 12:00 AM