Assignment 1

In this abstraction assignment, I have chosen a payphone as my object.

In stage 2, I tried to replicate the salient features of the payphone in the original image such as the handset, keypad and coin slot. Then, in stage 3 I removed the numbers on the keypad, the coin return slot as well as the inner screen and the buttons under it. In stage 4, I removed the side buttons and the card slot. In stage 5, I removed the coin slot and made the screen bigger. I also removed the outline of the keypad and made the keypad bigger. Finally, in stage 6, I removed the screen and move the keypad up to the center. In this last stage, I filled the keypad with black colour as I feel that this would make the keypad stand out beside the black coloured handset. My intention was to draw the audience’s attention to these two features. I chose to only include the handset and keypad as those two are well recognised feature of a payphone. I chose to keep the phone cable throughout all the stages to help identify my handset as a handset because I feel that the handset in my final stage does not look like a handset without the cable because of its shape. I thought it looked more like a bathroom safety bar than a handset.

The above image is my final stage without the phone cable. I tried to replicate the original shape of the handset as closely as possible in all my stages.

In the abstraction process, my thought process was to remove features that I think are less or not important.

During the critique session, the first feedback I got was that my final stage looks like a house phone rather than a payphone which was what I intended it to be. This was a good point as I also had the thought that it looks somewhat like a house phone but I was not too sure of how to make it look more like a payphone. Initially, I wanted to retain the coin slot as it is a prominent feature of a payphone, but the coin slot looks out of place if I just kept only the coin slot at its original spot without the coin return lever at the final stage. Hence, after much consideration, I decided to exclude it. I did not keep the coin return lever because I thought it would be too much details for this abstraction assignment.

I talked about my concern in response to the feedback and a feedback I got was that I could place the coin return slot somewhere else or represent it with a symbol. A general feedback was that I was following too closely the original placement and shape of the parts of the payphone. I placed everything at the same spot except for the keypad and kept the handset shape throughout the stages because I thought everything had to be at the same place and same shape. I resized the keypad and shifted its position as only the keypad and handset remain at the final stage, so I thought the keypad size had to be bigger and centralised so that it stands out at the final stage.

After the critique session, I tried to improve my work according to the feedback and above is my final submission.

At the critique session, I was also told that my stage 1 could be too abstract so in stage 1 of my final submission, I added in more details like the words and symbols. I did not include it for the critique submission because I did not think that was necessarily as I thought I just had to capture the main features of the payphone. In stage 2, I started by taking away all the words and symbols. In stage 3, I decided to remove parts that I did not think were that important for identifying a payphone. Hence, I took away the inner screen and the buttons below it, the buttons beside the keypad, the frame for the keypad, the coin return slot and the phone cable. This is similar to my stage 4 in the critique submission but I removed the phone cable because I do not think that it is important as I was going to change the shape of the handset to a more easily identifiable one. In stage 4, I removed the screen and the coin return lever and added a circle to represent a coin at the coin slot so that it can be easily identified that that is a coin slot. I also changed the shape of the handset because I thought the original handset that I drew does not quite resemble a handset and would not be identifiable at the final stage. I then shifted the keypad to the right to make space for the handset. In stage 5, I thought I could push it further and removed the keypad. I thought just the handset and the coin slot would be enough to identify the object as a payphone.

In this assignment, I learnt how to simplify a complicated object. I learnt that I do not have to replicate each feature but instead, represent it with an easily identifiable symbol. This was an important learning point to me as I never thought of doing that before the assignment. In addition, I also think that choosing a clear and correct symbol is important to convey my intended message to the audience. I also learnt the usefulness of abstraction and why there is a need for abstraction. Although abstract symbols are all around us such as the no smoking sign, I never gave much thought about it. Now that I have done an abstraction of an object myself, I know how to better appreciate abstraction and how it can be useful. Instead of drawing a payphone with so much details as in my stage 1, I could just draw a handset and a coin slot and people will still understand that this is a payphone. This is a lot more efficient, especially if I was tasked to create a public sign.