Visual Techniques

 

Singularity

 

Juxtaposition

Singularity and Juxtaposition are respectively manipulated on both posters connoting the message of contents. The first poster has a solitary object, which is an illustration of an eye placed in the centre.  When viewers look carefully, the eye is composed of a pupil and a dialogue bubble. The composition of the eye implies “visual communication.” The single object specific emphasizing on the key message successfully promotes communication with viewers. The second poser juxtapositely place the dancing legs of males and females, which interact as foreground and background. The juxtaposition of male and female, black and white created a fantastic visual interest, which connotes a sense of celebration.  Both technique uses serve to the message of the contents that would be delivered. Although singularity and juxtaposition are pair of polarizes techniques, they both can successfully connote the concept of the designs, which ground on the goal of the design.

Blog Exercise–Contrast

This is a good case of visual communication design in manipulating the function of contrast. The poster using contrast of primary colours, black and white to create a prominent effect, which draws the attention from audiences. From the structure of the layout, we can see diagonal lines against the horizontal and vertical borders. Contrasting in shapes which a triangle against a circle adds a visual interest to the design. Colour against grey tone also help to increase the curiosities from audience. In addition, the abstract concept of speaking contrast to the representational image of a woman enhances a sense of humour. In general, the function of the contrast on this design sharpens the juxtaposed design elements through intensifying counterforces. Consequently, the contrast successfully expresses the entire mood, which is a sense of humour, and a visual statement.

This is a bad case of Photoshop image design. The designer had tried to sharpen the image through the orientation of the collaged images. However, the juxtaposed parts of this image missing the function of contrast to indicate visual cues, which cause the failure of this design. Although the scale of the Kung-Fu boy smaller than the dancing-lion, audiences still confuse on the distance of this two images due to their similar saturation of color. The similarity of scales among airplane and map signs also causes the ambiguity of the design. Therefore, the Photoshop created image loses the quality of reality. To refine the design, the designer can apply contrasts to create depth cues, which decrease the saturation of the dancing boy and map signs. Also, decreasing the sizes of the airplane and map signs make the sense of depth of this image reasonable.

Image Resources:
http://www.qvolabs.com/notes_modern_movement_timeline_RussianConstructivism.html   
http://www.numawebdesign.com/web-design-examples/examples-of-bad-graphic-design-images

Motion_blog

The poster “Laughing Squid” is a case of implied motion. In this 2d media, viewer can see a squid that is opening his mouth and dancing on the ocean. The motion of dancing was depicted through curvy lines making up arms, which are wavering. The mouth of the squid is illustrated with sharp teeth and a tongue, which stretched out conveying laugh. The eye of the squid looks half closed, which suggests laughing too. We don’t know if squid can laugh or not. The implied laugh of the squid is impersonated human’s behavior from our life experience. The green of the background implicates the circumstance of ocean, which aids the sense of the motion of the squid more trustful. In addition, the placement of letters suggest the motion of bouncing.

This poster is also another case of motion implied on the 2D printed media. The piece shows the motion in the ways of size, shape, overlap of images, color gradient and direction. The size of a bicyclist on the upper left side is the smallest while the largest is on the bottom of the right side. The middle-sized image is put on the center produced the transition between the smallest and the largest images. Combing with the sense of distance, the sizes image implies the bicyclist riding from distance toward viewers. The direction composed by the three images of bicyclists helps to convey an abstract movement. The overlapping images of bicyclists with color gradient create the effects of shapes on the bicyclists that suggest the energy of motion. In addition, the title of the piece also generates an abstract movement to guide the eyes of audiences from left to right.







Resource of images:
http://designreviver.com/inspiration/30-inspiring-poster-designs/
http://www.buyolympia.com/q/Item=stump-i-you-we-movement

Dimension/Depth/Space/Scale

The sample is an illustration, which is one of my professional interests– designing physical space. The space of the illustration is depicted through the depth cues of “relative size, linear perspective, texture gradient and overlap.” The sizes of the lambs on the roof became smaller gradually suggesting deeper space. The biggest size of the object of this illustration is a set of table-chair, which expresses the closest distance. When audients look further, they can see sets of table-chairs overlapping which suggests some sets of table-chairs are behind them. The relative sizes of the screens on the wall indicate the depth of space where bigger screens suggest closer distance to audiences. The texture gradient of delivers the sense of depth to audiences. In addition, linear perspective indicated on the lines of the roofs guide the audiences’ eyes to the depth of the space.

Tone & Color

          The sample is a poster design relating to my focused area, visual communication design. The design is cleverly in manipulated tone and color interacted with other design elements such as scale, shape to indicate three dimensions, space and express mood. Also, the tone and color cooperated together to establish an effective visual hierarchy to attract viewers. 
          First of all, the tone of the body of the racing car is from white to dark red. The light value suggests the highlight of the car; the dark value suggests the shadow on the side of the car body. Then the medium value creates gradation between the dark and light values.  All tones work together to suggest a sense of three-dimensional car body. The tones on wheels of the car indicated the texture and give viewers the sense of movement. In addition, the tones works with scale of the buildings create the sense of distance.
         The foreground and title colors are used with primary and secondary color, which are red, orange and blue together with black contrasting to tertiary colors background, which are less saturation. The color contrast creates visual hierarchy of the design. The color works with the shapes create a roundish, smooth appearance of the car body, which appeal to the eyes of viewers. Furthermore, red on the car body is associated with sport and exciting.

Design Education

Lines in this composition possess huge vitality. They seemed restlessly, randomly and endlessly dancing throughout all sides of borders.  The curvy lines expressing the meaning of celebration and happiness play a key role to express the concept of this design. The runny linear feature of the lines generates an atmosphere of freedom and celebration.

Each unique Shape in a design presents its own feature relating to a lot of meaning. In this design, the negative space was divided into four triangles by two obvious lines comprised with typefaces. These four triangles create the sense of dynamic, tension and stress that related to the geometric structure of a contemporary design.

Color is the most essential component in visual communication. It is linked to plenty of meaning connected to our culture, and perceptive experience. In this design, green almost occupies two third of the space in the layout because it aids to express the concept which is the environment.  Green delivers a feeling of pleasant to viewers because green come from viewer’s perceptive experience related to tree, grass and other elements of natural environment.

Sources of images:
http://backgrounds-for-computer.blogspot.com/2009/01/backgrounds-graphics.html
http://www.designjuices.co.uk/2010/06/graphic-design-inspiration-typography-text-art/
http://www.canstockphoto.com/preventive-environmental-protection-4391969.html

Blog Exercise: Visual Thinking Research

Among the four color snakes (black, blue, green, and red), can you find the shortest one? For this puzzle, I “filled in” the dashed curvy lines of various colors. Then I tried to divide these curve line to make up patterns of circles to calculate how much circles that I have so that I might compare the lengths of each line. However, I fail on this way. Afterward I found that these lines could be divided into smaller units, which were quarters of a circle. I count the units, which a quarter line of a circle then I got the solution, which the Red line, was the shortest one (11 units). There are six pairs of identical shapes in this diagram. Can you find each of them? A shape from one pair doesn't appear in another.  Solving this puzzle require the imagination of how the “rotating’ objects would look like and the technique of matching. For example, when I was looking at the puzzle “A,” I exampled and compare other puzzles to see what similarities did they had while imaged what were their forms being looked like in different angles. As a result, I came out that the “I” puzzle was a rotated angle of “A”.

Week 7 Blog Exercise_feature hierarchy

This image was a poster connected to my major, Visual Communication Design. It was an Art Deco Poster. This poster is composed of shape channel and color channel. These channels work together to create a feature hierarchy, which also display the depth of the composition.  The shape of the bird is detectable preattentively. The color feature channel over the shape feature channel of the bird makes the glass of wine more pop out. At the beginning, the viewer’s eye will detect the shape feature channel of the bird and the title because of their dominant size. However, the pop out of the color channel make the wine become the foreground contrasting to the background shape of the bird is more attractive to eyes of viewers. Color feature channel attract eye more effectively.

Photo from:
http://donovanolson.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/art-deco.jpg

Visual Perception 1 / Top-Down Visual Processing

The “Top Down” process is applied to the design of this poster. The purpose of the design is trying to motivate audiences’ attention to understand the concept of global environmental protection.  The attention on the composition is a dominant image with a symbolize “person” riding a bicycle which two wheels are illustrations of the global. The” Top Down” attention produces bias and causes audiences favours on the central image while ignoring another less important information. In addition, the feature and pattern level creates an area of interest leaded to more fixations on this area.

http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/August/aug15_posters.shtml

Week 5 Blog Exercise

Successul Example

       This was a successful poster design “The National Ballet of Canada”. The asymmetrical balance of the composition created a motion impact which appealing the eyes of viewers. The vertical aligning typeface on the left side of the layout cooperating with image of a ballet dancer composted of an elegant form, which created asymmetrical balance and sharpened the design.

Fail Example

     
This was fail design web page where viewers would be confused by the random and imbalanced placement of design elements. The title of the website, the photo of product and text were placing without syntactical guideline. Those components together produced an uneven edge on the centre of the web page. The menu bar was placed vertically on the far left side of the page causing losing connection with other content of the website.  Consequently, the design of this web page was fail to deliver message to their targeted audience.

Blog Exercise: Visual vs Symbolic Language

        Representational content: Unhappy person, Stock board (not obvious), urban landscape; Symbols: Text (horizontal); Underlying compositional structure: arrow-pointing upward, Red, white, text scale.
       The photo displays a man sitting in front of the stock board with his back turning to viewers and his hand holding his head (seemed covering his eyes). The man seems unhappy. The scene of the man, the background of the Stock bard and the urban landscape are associated with economic issue, which resulted in the sadness of the man. When viewers move their eyes from left to right, they see the white text “UNEMPLOYMENT RATE” and the red arrow pointing upward to the text “RATE” which size is larger than other text. These elements added together emphasize the size of the “RATE” is large. The red on the arrow implicates alert and its upward direction helps guiding viewers eyes to the white text “UMEMPLOMENT RATE”. In addition, the red arrow pointing upward suggests unemployment rate rising. The English text can be replace with another text of language such as Chinese.

meaning 2: Interactions Between the 3 levels

The poster for “Earth Day” demonstrates three levels of visual including representation, abstraction, and symbolism.
The representational level is a picture of a tree leave spanning through the two dimension of the poster. The tree leave represents the environment that we have been living.  It appeals viewers to pay attention to environmental issues.
Related to other two levels, the representational level of the design serves to deliver to message of the basic concept that is the environmental issue.
The abstractive level is an illustration abstracting from a representational human face for expression. The representational human face was distilled into a drawing of a contour of a human face and two eyes. The eyes cause impact to viewers and appeal for the concern of the environmental issues. This level helps to develop the basic concept expressed by the representational level.
The symbol level displays some text information and a symbol of the earth abstracted from the representational globe. The symbol delivers a message to viewers that express the issues about earth. Associating with other levels, the symbol level is help to convey a message that is calling on peoples worldwide to take responsibility to environmental protection. In general, three levels of visual tie together to construct the whole design.

Meaning 1 - Blog Exercise

Representation
This representational example is a picture of a statue of an Arabian, which was made of Legos.  The statue is represental becasuce audiences can recognize it from the detail of its appearance and ethnic dress. It is the direct depict of a real person.  The target audiences of this statue are children so that establish a statue a by copying it from real life is good for educating Children. Also, the color of the the statue is attractive in three primary color for children. Furthermore, material which is lego for establishing this statue is expressive and appropriated to attract children.

Abstraction
This image is abstracting in the way of function. The abstraction derives from the concept of “BIG.” Audiences can visually perceive the “big” of the shop through the word of “BIG” which scale is larger than other objects on the top of the gate. So the sign creates straight relationship to our visual perception. The image delivers a message that the shop provides a huge amount of products for customers. In addition, the impact that the image created is helpful to attract customers to the shop.

Symbolism
This example is a wood sign for children’s riding at LEGOLAND of California. The sign is associated with animals which patterns of skins show on the sign. The essential features of these animals are the color and pattern of their skin so that it is not necessary to add other parts of the animals on the sign. For example, white strips on black background of a letter “A” denote a zebra. As the result, this symbol is helping children connection the sign to animals.