Here students were asked to design a large black and white mandala, again using a vocabulary of simple shapes on a big circular construction. Like a pie cut in 5, 6, 8 or 9 pieces, each piece had to be identical. It was essential to use any tool necessary such a compass, triangle, protractor... and a ruler of course! Right from the start, students are asked to buy frisket paper to be cut as a stencil and a sponge roller to do as clean a job as possible.

The object here was to come up with 49 different pixel designs. Students were again introduced here to the use of the grid and shown differents types of grids. The purpose was purely graphic but the number was important in order to force everone to find as many solutions as possible. Beginners have the  funny tendancy of being satisfied with only one idea, which obviously is not enough for someone supposed to be very creative!!! To me, designing is essentially playing and fooling around with shapes; searching for new ideas and compostions is part of the fun. If there isn't any fun or pleasure in the process, it will show and the end solution runs the risk of being bland if not just plain boring. The course is built up to in a very playful manner even though it is also a lot of hard and time-consuming work. Laughing, exchanging ideas, opinions, technical skills is highly encouraged. When thinking and searching for new ideas, it is one case where "more is NOT less". The more ideas, the better.