Readings and two more tile ideas

I've always thought of pictures of two or three colors as containing "white space" instead of the background and the image being the figure, mostly because of my journalism background. Now that I know these different terms and how they're used, I'll be able to communicate better with people in the graphic design field.

In notes on figure and background, I found it interesting in that there's a 'waist' in a graphic. It makes it sound like a figure should always have a middle. I've never thought that what I did for my tiles should or does have a middle. I was also interested in the "half and half" concept. I think the eye naturally sees the black more than the white in a tile, so while I'm interested in attempting this, I don't know how I'll be able to make it exactly half the space.

I never thought about the weight an object had. When I put a lot of black in one of my tiles, I just thought there would the opposite use of white as the figure and black as the ground. Thinking of gravity in a tile is something new I'll have to start considering. I've always thought of it as shading, or a shadow... so this is new to me.

While the work we're doing is in 2-D, I think it's very interesting how many graphics are in 3-D. I love watching movies like "Ratatouille" and "Finding Nemo" and the likes. and I know it must take so much more work than putting a letter on a 6X6 tile so my trying to decide which font and how to place is seems to matter less in the grand scheme of things.

Finally- I'm doing my tiles for the light rail station and the co-ed bathroom. I think something almost trippy for the light rail station would let people look at it while waiting for the rail. I wanted something for them to find different designs out of (sort of like clouds). I used Ms and, I think achieved what I was going for.

For the co-ed bathroom, like what's been said before, I wanted something that wouldn't have a gender. A tile that can be easily repeatable and still have something to look at while doing their business. Using Ks, I was able to find a way to mix a little bit of fun with a tile that could easily be re-created and duplicated.