full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Marian Bantjes: Intricate beauty by design

Unscramble the Blue Letters

This is a piece that I did for The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. They have a magazine that they call G2. And this is for their pzuzle sapiecl in 2007. And puzzling it is. I saetrtd by creating a series of tiling units. And these tiling units, I designed sccilpiaefly so that they would contain parts of letterforms within their shapes so that I could then join those peceis together to create letters and then words within the abstract patterning. But then as well, I was able to just flip them, rotate them and combine them in different ways to crteae either regular patterns or abstract patterns. So here's the word puzzle again. And here it is with the abstract surrounding. And as you can see, it's extremely difficult to read. But all I have to do is fill certain areas of those letterforms and I can bring those words out of the background pattern. But maybe that's a little too obvious. So then I can add some coolr in with the background and add a bit more color in with the wodrs themselves, and this way, wnorkig with the art director, I'm able to bring it to just the right point that it's puzzling for the audience — they can figure out that there's something they have to read — but it's not impossible for them to read.

Open Cloze

This is a piece that I did for The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. They have a magazine that they call G2. And this is for their ______ _______ in 2007. And puzzling it is. I _______ by creating a series of tiling units. And these tiling units, I designed ____________ so that they would contain parts of letterforms within their shapes so that I could then join those ______ together to create letters and then words within the abstract patterning. But then as well, I was able to just flip them, rotate them and combine them in different ways to ______ either regular patterns or abstract patterns. So here's the word puzzle again. And here it is with the abstract surrounding. And as you can see, it's extremely difficult to read. But all I have to do is fill certain areas of those letterforms and I can bring those words out of the background pattern. But maybe that's a little too obvious. So then I can add some _____ in with the background and add a bit more color in with the _____ themselves, and this way, _______ with the art director, I'm able to bring it to just the right point that it's puzzling for the audience — they can figure out that there's something they have to read — but it's not impossible for them to read.

Solution

  1. create
  2. puzzle
  3. color
  4. special
  5. working
  6. words
  7. pieces
  8. specifically
  9. started

Original Text

This is a piece that I did for The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. They have a magazine that they call G2. And this is for their puzzle special in 2007. And puzzling it is. I started by creating a series of tiling units. And these tiling units, I designed specifically so that they would contain parts of letterforms within their shapes so that I could then join those pieces together to create letters and then words within the abstract patterning. But then as well, I was able to just flip them, rotate them and combine them in different ways to create either regular patterns or abstract patterns. So here's the word puzzle again. And here it is with the abstract surrounding. And as you can see, it's extremely difficult to read. But all I have to do is fill certain areas of those letterforms and I can bring those words out of the background pattern. But maybe that's a little too obvious. So then I can add some color in with the background and add a bit more color in with the words themselves, and this way, working with the art director, I'm able to bring it to just the right point that it's puzzling for the audience — they can figure out that there's something they have to read — but it's not impossible for them to read.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
visual work 3
graphic design 2
requires figuring 2
household tinfoil 2
mailing list 2
wanted people 2
passing time 2

Important Words

  1. abstract
  2. add
  3. areas
  4. art
  5. audience
  6. background
  7. bit
  8. bring
  9. call
  10. color
  11. combine
  12. create
  13. creating
  14. designed
  15. difficult
  16. director
  17. extremely
  18. figure
  19. fill
  20. flip
  21. guardian
  22. impossible
  23. join
  24. letterforms
  25. letters
  26. magazine
  27. newspaper
  28. obvious
  29. parts
  30. pattern
  31. patterning
  32. patterns
  33. piece
  34. pieces
  35. point
  36. puzzle
  37. puzzling
  38. read
  39. regular
  40. rotate
  41. series
  42. shapes
  43. special
  44. specifically
  45. started
  46. surrounding
  47. tiling
  48. units
  49. ways
  50. word
  51. words
  52. working