The Randomizer of Wisdom

December 19, 2010

If you’re like me, then you’re feeling down this holiday season. It’s time to turn that frown upside down.

Sources

A couple months ago, I was at a rummage sale when I saw this little Japanese dish. It had an interesting pattern on it—five circles evenly interwoven with one another. I purchased it for a dollar or two. Later, I became intrigued with the pattern, and I thought I would replicate it in Illustrator for grins.

I duplicated the pattern a few times, broke it apart, and colored different parts of the pattern. It was fun, but I didn’t really have a practical application for it. Sometimes experiments seem to lead nowhere.

Every year since 2002, I have been making my own Christmas cards. This started as a lark because I was unemployed at the time and very, very bored. It was such a relief to be making something with my hands.

For 2010, I wanted to do something fun, but that would remind people not to get too caught up in the expectations we have for the holidays. I had an idea to create a circle that one could turn around and reveal multiple inspirational sayings or quotes.

Initially, I didn’t have any directions for turning the circle, and testing showed that turning the circle wasn’t intuitive. Also, at 5.5 x 5.5 inches, I didn’t have enough room around the circle to site the authors’ names. So, I numbered each, and set up a key for the authors’ names on the back of the card. After some trial and error, I came up with the design below.

Here’s the hidden grid I used to set up the quotes and numbers:

But, I needed a design for a front circle part that would rotate around an eyelet, and cover up all but one quote and one number. Of course, the five-circle pattern I had already created would be the perfect pattern to base my design on.

Putting It All Together

I created about a dozen different designs for the front circle, including a few based on six circles instead of five, and three different sets of quotations.

Here’s some examples, including an example of six circles as the base instead of five: