Text, Patterns, and Creative Experiments | August 21, 2025
This Week’s Highlight
This week I’ve been experimenting with a text distortion effect: a way to stretch, bend, and ripple words until they feel more like flowing textures than static letters. It’s also a great way to get hands-on with polar and cartesian coordinates while leaving plenty of room to play. With just a few tweaks to the variables, you can transform the effect from soft, flowing waves into bold, chaotic twists.
What Inspires Me
Hitomezashi is a traditional Japanese embroidery technique, sometimes called “one-stitch stitching,” where straight stitches on a grid form geometric designs. At first glance, the patterns seem simple, but step back and complex, repeating motifs emerge.
I discovered Hitomezashi last week thanks to a Japanese SPARK member who always sneaks a touch of culture into his sketches! This Numberphile video gives a neat rundown and could inspire your own experiments (warning: highly addictive).
Beyond the Numbers
Lately, I’ve been trying new formats, and yes, the views aren’t always high. But does it mean it failed? Maybe. Or maybe success isn’t just a number.
For me, the value is also in the trying: the sparks of curiosity, the unexpected ideas, the little “aha” moments that come from doing something differently.
I don’t have all the answers, and part of experimenting is learning through iterations. What do you think?
Until next week!
Patt