Music of Changes design

Design ideas

May 9

By Clare

I remember in my third year undergrad, I was surprised to learn about John Cage’s interest in zen and in the ancient Chinese I-Ching. In the case if you haven’t heard of I-Ching, this is an ancient book that sometimes goes by the name of Book of Changes. It was the book that many generations of emperors referred to for guidance. Basically, the emperors had royal interpreters of I-Ching working for them. When the emperors needed guidance, they would have to do hexagrams, and then take the results and refer to the book. I was very interested in zen and chance and this type of things as a kid. (You can read more in details about how it works here! )

This pattern here represents the possibilities of combinations that you can get. You will notice that each hexagram has 6 rows. Each row is either a solid line or two short lines. So depending on which pattern you get, you then refer to the book for the result.

I wanted to make it clear that Cage composed Music of Changes with I-Ching, so the idea first started with the 64 hexagrams in the background. I then put the text Music of Changes on the top. But it felt like something was missing, and I wasn’t sure how to include Cage’s name in the design.

So finally, one day I was in front of the computer editing this design into different colors while browsing some other random designs for inspiration, I thought of the four letters C-A-G-E. The word “music” ends with C…any change there is an “e” in the word “changes”?! Well, there it was, but I would have to make the word “music” much bigger and “changes” much smaller to have the e right under the C. So that didn’t look very good. So then I saw there is a “g” in the word “changes”, and I tried to play around with sizing the letters. And it worked!!!

Now I feel the design is more complete! It’s Music of Changes by Cage based on I-Ching!