Illustrating sounds

Illustrating three sounds without describing them

One of the assignments for my Graphic Design course (AR2301) at WPI was to illustrate three sound concepts from a list of 6 (I think) without describing them. So we couldn’t use text to say what a car crash sounded like; instead, we had to somehow convey the meaning using other techniques. I chose A Car Crash, A Clock Ticking and A Conversation between a Tuba and a Flute.

It was an interesting homework assignment; it was mostly done in class as the professor allocated an hour for it. Figuring out how to illustrate something rather describe it was one half of the problem; the other was figuring out how to use Illustrator to create the illustration! Illustrator still confuses me, especially compared to Photoshop; while Illustrator is more “Mac-like” in that it uses the standard Mac shortcut keys for a lot of things (Cmd-Z to undo, Shift-Cmd-Z to redo), it is different from Photoshop which has its own system (Cmd-Z to undo/redo the last action). So switching between the apps messes up muscle memory. Not a good experience, Adobe!

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