In Washington, DC there is a neighborhood called NoMa. Its name calls to mind the “acronym as name” trend that you encounter in New York: SoHo, LE

NoMa Mural - by mello good - Good Graphics

submited by
Style Pass
2021-09-17 15:00:09

In Washington, DC there is a neighborhood called NoMa. Its name calls to mind the “acronym as name” trend that you encounter in New York: SoHo, LES, DUMBO to name a few. It stands for North of Massachusetts Avenue and in this neighborhood there is a mural:

From a citizen standpoint there’s nothing particular special about the mural. Especially when you juxtapose it against its siblings across the city that are more localized and depict black life that is full of color and wonder. DC has a city sponsored mural Mural Project that you should check out to see what I mean.

From an artist standpoint I find this work inspiring. The use of Geometrics and Layout play together so well. The colors look good at all times of the day and the non-conformity in the size and color of the shapes creates an effect where my eye is drawn to a different part every time I look at it. It works on both a zoomed-out and zoomed-in level.

The Grid for the layout is generated at random using a Quadtree and by applying some of the thinking from Tiles and Mosaics we can ensure that each “Tile” randomly selects its characteristics from a list of possibilities. The only thing I didn’t implement was non-square cells in the Quadtree Grid and I might update it in the future to add this change in and bring it closer to the original work.

Leave a Comment