Image & Text, back to basics with visual literacy. Going back to routes of practice drawing letterforms and photography
- Re visit key elements of VL from a graphic design perspective.
- In order to recognise and explore the complexity and mystery of an image and text in graphic communication.
- So that we can exploit a better understanding of graphic composition.
Formal Considerations
All of the bits that make a piece need to be considered, the empty space and the page, balance, symmetry, dynamic equilibrium, contrast, visual weight + recognition (psychology), reading image and text, point and line, Harmony and contradiction, positioning the viewer.
Why?
Fundamentally important to a range of design practices. Page layout, illustration, book design, advertising, film & motion graphics, new media, packaging etc.
Empty Space
Meaning and inherent dynamics.
Image above represents the page or window. Represents potential, the immanent, the void, ‘notional’ or imaginary space, ground (figure/ground), the field, ‘window’ onto other/extended space. Writers blank page represents space of artists imagination. Virtual space to invite audience. How big is it?
Ground = Paper surface
Figure = Goes onto the ground
Field = Paper for the mind map (Paper represents field of knowledge)
‘Window” = Canvas is window into bigger space. Looking through it into artists imagination.
Choosing kind of space to best express idea. ‘A reader on reading - Alberto Manguel’ Page 124 “Terrifying whiteness of the page”
- Use empty space to work with to perhaps to intimidate.
- The golden section, fibonacci sequence - paper sizes
- A-sizes created according to what Westerners believe to be aesthetically beautiful, mathematical and standardised.
- To create unconventional sizes you must change the conventional size of “the book” for instance.
- Paper stock is important, shape and size.
The audience don’t like things close to the edge, it makes us feel uncomfy, our eyes are constantly moving all over the image, from left to right. Bottom right diagram above takes the viewer off the page, whatever is missing we can imagine the rest. Entertain the viewer. These are vital for page layout. Rhythm of the grid, the structure underneath the content is made by understanding page layout.
Once paper is chosen the space is changed/defined by the mark, activated, defined, deformed, disrupted, punctured, polluted, enhanced etc.
BALANCE
Symmetry can be stable but this is potentially boring.
Dynamic equilibrium - the eyes enjoy suspense. Symmetry in faces, we enjoy this initially but after a while it becomes a bit weird. Scales in diagram above right are predictable and give a sense of balance. Scales in bottom right give us a sense of moving as if it were to tip over which makes the composition more interesting to look at.
Compositions above become more interesting as you go down due to composition and colours.
V&A poster - Vince Frost. Symmetrical but there are other twists to make it interesting.
Images we recognise all of the time don’t need to be big on the page unless this is important as we easily recognise even when quite small that the image is of a face for instance.
Barnbrook’s type spec sheets rely on you recognising the symbols from elsewhere (example above wasn’t the one shown in lecture - can’t seem to find that one, it was cyan and magenta and had the symbol of a cross on it!)
Why is the red dot in the above design? makes you feel like you’re putting your tongue to an iron. Hiding or revealing, which is most effective?
Balance - Bauhaus posters stripped down of their layout, i.e. cut all of the elements of a poster up and re-arrange them by hand in front of you as apposed to on screen, it’s more immediate this way and happens at the speed of your thought. How a small piece of text on a page layout can hold the whole composition together, if it’s taken away, the whole composition feels like it might fall down.
The human eye recognises and relishes contrast
We stop seeing familiar things that don’t or haven’t changed. But we can also enjoy the boring as it is denying you change. In portfolios, most people use black text to annotate, why? Why not use 80% black so the work can stand out more. Rembrandt’s painting are mostly blurry, he only used absolute black next to white on the eyes as it anchors us in psychologically to the piece and pulls you in to dwell on a creation part of the piece.
Smaller can be stronger if done well with contrast. Artists exhibition catalogues/books need the work to stand out over the design that the designer is using to put the piece together with.
If the below are identical - > These can change
Shape + Colour - > Size is effected
Shape + Size - > Colour
Colour + Colour - > Shape
How does your graphic information relate to the edge of the page? (See diagram above) The left composition feels stable, 2nd feels like it is nervous, moving, irritated, and 3rd is on it’s way down, it has movement.
Designer Paul Smith’s catalogue breaks the rules as it’s audience are savvy enough to understand that it’s not correct but it is witty with the heads being cropped out of the image frame. The photography doesn’t look like a product shot, it’s almost not real information. Marion Deuchars book covers, again examples of images cropped in “the wrong places”. Upsetting the rules by deliberate odd cropping/clumsiness. Guilty faces, icons (Statue of liberty, coca cola) easily recognised and so are powerful and so they can be decided upon carefully where to be placed.
. Point = static fixed, terminated
----- line = time, duration, direction, movement
However, where is the word? You can imply word through image, when you are directly given the word, you have nothing to do or think about. If someone says refrigerator, you all start to think of a refrigerator, where is the image? In your head, is it the same image you all have in your head?
Sagmeister’s Lou Reed album - The grid is the face. Making the audience engage physically through showing breathing etc, you’ve hooked the audience as it makes the feel it physically.
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