Week 14_ Visual Techniques

The first two images are vector graphic illustration made by Canadian illustrator Martin Bregman. I really like the style of his work. The composition of the images are simple and elegant. The color usage is few and not overwhelming. It has a great balance of the light and dark positive and negative spaces. I really like how he groups different objects together, making them having the unity with different variations. The subtle shapes of the objects are very calm and elegant. What i like the most is the simplicity style, it really brings out the meanings and expressions in a artistic way.

Visuals can be on different medium, it can be traditionally hand drawn, it can be graphic design, it can be motion graphics. I’m interested in doing the combination of all three. To me, visual communication isn’t just creating the images, but also sending message that makes impact, with full of emotions.

The second example is one of my favorite visual designs, one design that truly impacts and inspires me. This video is called the “girl effect” by made by Nike Foundation to help 50 million girls in poverty survive. The entire video is only 3 minutes long, but its wonderfully plotted and graphically illustrated beautifully to express the deep meaning with the most concise and simple graphics. I always wanted to create illustration visuals with the simple lines and concepts. The entire video used less than 3 main colors, with no photos or complicate images. Only a series of bold shapes and neutral Helvetica typeface. The background music is also a huge plus in addition to this wonderfully designed video. Comparing both illustrations and the video, I noticed a few of their similarities and differences. Their similarities is the use of simple intuitive vector graphic, the unity of simple geometric shapes and the wonderful balance of limited color use. The differences is the still image has more information on one surface compare to videos are showing informations in sequence. Both of them are really successful designs using the simplest aesthetic shapes to represent the big message that just words can’t describe.

week 13- Contrast

Blog Exercise - CONTRAST

The first design is a cover illustration made by Milton Glaser, it is a very successful design because of its beautiful lines and contrast. The image consists of three major groups, the colorful hair, the black and white face/background, and the text which says Milton Glaser Graphic Design. The first part is the hair, which made out of many curvy flowing shaping that has different colors and textures. The hair is nicely set up in contrast with the black face with back background and the black background behind the hair. Because the colors and the textures of the hair are very eye catching. The background are set up in a very subtle, black and white. Besides the contrast in color. The shapes outside the hair are also bigger and bolder. Created a strong support for the colorful hair as the focal point. The last part of the image is its text, the text is set in white which contrasts the black background. The typeface of the font is modern and edgy, the straight and horizontal lines in the text contradicts the curvy lines for the graphic, while the curvy part of the text and the overall set up really complements the graphic. The entire design is very well balanced by its contrast in color, shape and composition.

The second design is a graphic illustration for Frozen Products Catalogue. This visual contains both real figure and surreal illustrations. The entire design has a poor use of contrast which overwhelms the eye. First of all, the overall color is warm and yellow, the background is yellow and the surreal objects are yellow. The color choice isn’t anything wrong here, but the little girl is dressed in the same color palette. This makes the two elements competes each other. Now look at the over all composition, we noticed it’s very hard to tell where in the image is the main message. Is it the girl who’s covering her mouth, is it the flowers, or is it the ice cream bar. The major contrast failure in this image is the graphic parallel. Both main objects the little girl and the pop up shapes are standing out and eye catching, it’s hard to identify the dominant focus although we know its made for frozen products. Have focus is very important in cover graphics, but with the lack of contrast in both color and object, this design piece is overwhelming and out of focus therefore not very successful.

Week 12. Motion.

#1 Magazine Cover

The first design element I chose is a magazine cover, this cover has a strong sense of implied movement. It is very successful at creating the movement. The arrows of the cover communicate the movement and change, the different colors of arrows has a illusion of depth. Every different color each arrow has makes the line create the motion under a different perspective. This cover is certainly a visual with implied movement that creates the continuation of the shape and patterns. The weaknesses of this image is the not about the motions these arrows created. But the entire composition, for the first image, the composition of the title and the image will have a better unity if aligned on the left and right side of the edge. With the arrows extent to the left over the edge of the title. Our eyes will focus on the image first before the title, which defeats the purpose of the headline. The second image on the other hand, has a great spread on the page creates an even and consistent visual space.

#2 Poster

I'm interested in the fields of graphic design, the posters are very visual and eye catching, but sometimes, the poster can go very wrong with the inappropriate movement. I spotted this poster on one of my visits to the dentist in Fremont.

The purpose of the poster is to send the message, although it is a still poster without significant movement element, but it has made to illustrate a clear eye movement for the viewers, to clearly read the content. But this poster has so many elements not connecting each other result a bad navigation on the entire poster because each element doesn't connect to another. First of all, the 7 images are shattered in 3-4 different spots of the poster gives it a very busy feeling. The biggest image on the top of the poster is supposed to be the dominant image, but the purpose of that image isn't clear enough. On the other hand, the visual movement should start from the title of the poster, but this poster got the most important message "Invisalign Day" hidden in the middle between different images. It's difficult to identify this to be th main title of the poster. Also confuses the eye to know which direction to go for. The groupings are not clear, the alignment of the subtitles isn't consistent. Overall, there are so much design set up that needs to fix in order to stimulate eye movement and create smooth visual flow for this effective poster.

Week 11. Dimension. Depth. Scale.

http://www.boredpanda.com/giant-clothespin-sculpture/

This giant clothespin sculpture was created by a Turkish art professor Mehmet Ali Uysal for the Festival of the Five Seasons in Chaudfontaine Park, Belgium. (Image credits: mmarsupilami)

This image is about a giant sculpture of a cloth pin.

It has lots of visual elements including dimension, space, and scales. The object we see in this sculpture is 3-Dimensional, but it is seen via our 2D screen. The perspective of the image is linear perspective, which is more dimensional. The image has more than one or two focal points, the empty space and the contrast of greens created lots of space in this image.

The main element of this image is scale. Scale is the comparing of objects to perceive size, it applies to physical objects in space, depth perception, and graphic depictions of size. In this image of a sculpture, artist purposely enlarged our ordinary small clothepin to a large scale bigger than human size. Just by perceiving one object individually, we won’t be able to tell the size of the object. But when 2 objects are compared together, we will mostly be able to tell the size of the object. We are able to tell the size of the clothepin is much bigger because of the settings and the people figures in the background. Our sense of scale depends on context, comparison, and often prior knowledge. Therefore, when irregular sized object requires some other comparisons to identify the true size. Human characters or body parts such as face or hands are often used, it is some familiar reference for comparison.

Week 10. Tone and Color blog excercise

My area of interest in graphic design is illustration with vector graphics. This is a great illustration done by a Chicago graphic artist for a holiday card company. The entire tone of this card is very soothing and relaxed with the combination of two warm toned color. In Dondi's book chapter 3, we learned that complementary color can be the opposite colors, and the saturation of color can produce different dimensions to the image. In this image, only two major hue is used, the dark burgundy red and the turquoise color created a well balanced contrast. Beside these two major colors used, the most interesting element this image used is its transparency. By changing the transparencies of these colors, some of the small images have relatively different tones to the other images around which created different depths. Color use is very important, it can create dimension and movement. In this image, the method of movement we will use is scanning, as a method of seeing, appears to be unstructured, random reflection of objects. This image has both colors so evenly spread out, gives it a great balance of movement and therefore, created a beautifully designed illustration with the use of only 2 colors.

WEEK 9 The basic elements

My area of interest of design is in illustrations, which include book illustration, magazine spreads, posters and much more. It is a broader range of area because it includes so much, basically, any type of visuals can be categorized in illustration. To condense it down, I’m more interested in vector based graphics, that is simple and meaningful. I can be drawn traditionally on paper, later prototyped in CS suites.

These images are favorites I collected are from different famous illustrator out there.

Blog Exercise - The Basic Elements

1. Color, Shape, Scale. The first image i pick out is the elephant character, the image is consists of bold, clean shapes with the main object in the middle, in 3 distinctive light and soft colors. The color is settle, by using the scale of the small ice, it represented the bigger size of the elephant.

2. Lines, Direction, Movement: This is a vector animation captured from a famous advertising campaign made by Nike. In this image the shape of the hands are long and abstract, surrounding around the little girl which made her the focal point of the image. The direction of the image moves along with the direction where the hand moves.

3. Depth, Tone, Shape and Color Group. In this image, clear features of shape and color pops out immediately. The 3 different drawings have 3 different color tone, pin/red, green and multicolor, the tone is the intensity of the darkness or lightness of the object, which this image is very strong at . With different color tones and abstract shapes, these drawings developed a great depth into the shape, which gives multiple dimension and multiple perspective.

Week 8 Blog Exercise: Visual Thinking Research

To Do : Scan or take digital photos of the four (4) results, post one image for each and below each one describe the puzzle solving strategies each of you employed. Work to identify when and how you used the various visual thinking operations defined in the McKim reading. Remember, the blog exercises are an opportunity to practice using the vocabulary.

1. The first puzzle we did is "The Cat". In this puzzle we are trying to find how many different triangles can be counted in the cat. My friend and i each get our separate page and did the puzzles separately, it isn't too hard to find but we both missed one, I was over by one triangle and he was one less. For my puzzle, i counted all the individual triangles first and then i count the ones that grouped into triangles. I figured out where the triangles were concealed in the picture (according to the McKim reading from the chapter Images in Action). By the end, i over counted by 1. My partner Jacky visually draw out the triangles in the brain and counted from top to bottom. He count from small triangles and then the big triangles that's around. He got 19 and miss one as well.

2. The second puzzle is counting the cubes' direction and match them in pairs. I found this more difficult than the first one because there are a lot of rotations and memory processes in brain that makes the shapes more confusing for me. We both used the rotation method in the brain and both tried to capture the image at the same angle and find the corresponding pair. Another strategy i used is to convert 3d to 2d in my brain, which is only remember one setting of the squares from one single side and eliminate the mis-matching ones then keep going. (McKim's image action and converging), it took me so much time to figure out the pairs but gladly the answers were all correct. I like the 2nd puzzle more than the 1st one because it uses both side of the brain visually and logically, very challenging but fun little games.

WEEK 7 Blog Exercise - Visual Perception 2 / Feature Hierarchy

Blog Exercise - Visual Perception 2 / Feature Hierarchy

Find an example related to both this week's content - feature channels and their role in visual

search - and your planned major course of study and professional interests. Post at least

one image of it and write at least 8 sentences explaining (in your own words but using the

vocabulary of Ware, lectures, links, etc) HOW it is related to this week’s topics. The example

could be a website, poster, book design, tangible product (which often must communicate with

their users without resorting to text or icons), user interfaces, etc. Find something from an area

that YOU might like to design for. Be sure to provide credit for the example's creator and cite the

source (book or magazine title, WWW URL, etc.).

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For this week's blog i choose some illustration images done by pen. Being a graphic designer has so much to learn, such as rules and strains, but been a traditional drawing person for so many years, i'd want to combine my interest and my field of study together. This week's image is somehow related to the area I want to look more into.

These images are abstractive and interesting. With lots of great balance and compositions. These image gives a great movement. I especially like the first image. It is very expressive with the combination of geometric shapes and lines. The weights are focused on the right side but it's not out of balance. The hierarchies are very intricately mixed. Although the organic black shape on the right is more bold, those repeated shape and pattern on top of is has a great details which catches the eyes first. Making viewers wanted to see them first, the movement of eyes is supposed to be from top right to the bottom left, but the image is abstract enough to have other variations of visual perception.

Artist's Name: Cloudery

Word press address: http://cloudery.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/

Info: Cloudery. Drawings in Pen & Ink. In October 2008

WEEK6 --Blog Exercise: Visual Perception 1 / Top-Down Visual Processing

Blog Exercise: Visual Perception 1 / Top-Down Visual Processing

First, make sure you clearly understand the difference between bottom-up and top-down visual processing and the role of attention in visual perception and cognition.

Find a design example related to BOTH Top-Down Visual Processing (see Ware Reading + Lecture) and your intended/existing area of study.


Post at least one image of it and write at least 6 sentences explaining how it is related (in your own words but using the key vocabulary terms from the reading/lecture) and HOW top-down visual processing operates in its design.

Be sure to provide credit for the example's creator and cite the source (book or magazine title, WWW URL, etc.)


This is an image of a make-up desk with cosmetic objects on the desk and the mirrors and lighting on the side. It includes both Bottom-up and Top-down elements;
For the bottom-up processing it includes features, patterns and objects; the features in this image is the edges of the table, the reflection of the mirror, the depth of view created by different sizes of the make-up element. The pattern in this image is the texture of the wall made with the repeated rectangles and the lines. The objects in this image are the variety kinds of make-ups including lipstick, eyeshadow, powders and brushes. These objects made up the visual memory for this particular image.
This image also includes top-down visual processing which leads to directed eye movement and it has a action goal or cognitive goal that constant relates to each other. The eye movement for this image is defiantly the big brush and the powder lid that's in the center of the picture. It is in the front of everything, and the position makes this object the first thing to look at before other objects in the back. The image begin with short-fixations, the overview of the entire makeup table. Later concentrated in longer-fixations for more detailed visual process.

Image source: Fashionolia: http://fashionolia.com/how-to-become-a-make-up-artist/makeup-table/

Week 5 Blog Exercise - Design Success and Failure

Week 5 Blog Exercise - Design Success and Failure in Relation to Syntactical Guidelines

Find TWO (2) examples of design work that intersect with your major/interests/future professional plans, one where one or more of the Syntactical Guidelines have been put to good use IN RELATION TO THE GOALS FOR THE WORK AND THE TARGETTED USER and one where they HAVE NOT. Post at least one image for each and briefly describe HOW one succeeds and HOW the other fails. Be sure to identify which of the Syntactical Guidelines are involved and how they function in the two examples. Complete this by the next class meeting.

Topic related to interest/ future professional plans: Poster design.

Good Syntactical Guidelines:

This poster is a great example of a good syntactic design. The main purpose is to promote Energy Star appliances for people with sustainable conscious mind, the target of the poster is to the general adult consumer. The poster is well designed with the great visual image covering the full spread, with the headline in clean capitalized Helvetica bold. The information is well set in the bottom of the page for additional reads. It is very well balanced, the poster is a successful example of following syntactical guidelines.

Bad Syntactical Guidelines:

This is an image of a bad poster design, it fails to be a good design with syntactical guidelines because of the cluttered images and text.

From this cigarette commercial, we can see the target audience is older aged mature men and women. This poster is filled with different titles and headlines. The red bar in the bottom with headline is already very bold. But the yellowed colored card right on top took the attention away from the headline. In general, too much typefaces are used and it's too difficult for the visual flow. It is a design failure with the lack of order and unity.

4 Blog Exercise: Visual vs Symbolic Language

UNEMPLOYMENT

4 Blog Exercise: Visual vs Symbolic Language

Find a photographic image on the internet using the keyword "unemployment"

or "economy" and with Google images search set to "Photo content".


Download and post that photo on your blog and underneath post a the first paragraph of text as follows: Write a list of one-word or short-phrased responses you have to it in terms of its literal, representational content as well as itsunderlying compositional structure and include a list of any symbols (language or other symbols) that can be seen in the image. After this analysis, write a paragraph that completely reports (verbally) what the photograph reports (visually) and which could be used as a REPLACEMENT for it (as if you were describing it to someone who was visually impaired).

Symbols: Darkness

Visual representation words:

Business suits, briefcase, stairs in front of the business building.

One point perspective. Focusing point is his face. Shadows used in the composition.

This photo shows a guy sitting on the stairs of a business building, dressed up in all suits with his briefcase just like the people who would've go to work dressed like. He holds his face with an arm, looking towards down to the ground, from the image itself we can tell he is really sad about something. By looking at the environment, the stairs is dark, the lighting is gloomy. The only light source is like coming from the bottom towards his face. It is an one point perspective image, the person in suit, as to be the center and the main content of the image, is in the front and middle. and the background of all stairs extends to the very back, all dissolved into one dark point in the horizon line. This whole image gives a sad disappointing feel, while resembles and fully describes the word of "unemployment".

week 3 Blog- Meaning -2-

DAI 323 Visual Design Literacy
Blog Exercise - Meaning 2:  Interactions Between the 3 Levels

Representational

- In the blog exercise two, I'm using three different images to represent the same coke object. In representational, abstract, and symbolic ways. The first one is the representational aspect of the object. It is been illustrated clear and real life like. Just like the original coke can. The color is red and white with the white colored background. It simply relates directly to the product, and representing the product.




Abstract






This is the abstract version of the same object - coke bottle. The role this image plays is to express the different backgrounds and depth behind the object. In this abstractive image in particular, the shapes of leaves and rocks are used in the color of greens and browns. The shapes that is forming the bottle are very abstractive as well, which isn't the exact shape but we can still see the basic forms and shapes.


Symbolic
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The third image is the symbolic version of the Coke. The role this image plays is to allow audience associate to the product just seeing this symbolic photo. Because the Coke is very universal and iconic, the red and white stripes will serve as the purpose of symbols and automatically recalls what it will represent to. The shape is very simple but it is staple enough to represent the object clearly.

Week Two Post: MEANING -1-

Representational:

The first image is a straight forward image representing the caps and the body of water bottle. From Dondi's first lecture, this is the first level of visual material, that's very clear to the defination. The colors used is blue and white which is the basic colors for water. From the viewer's perspective, it is straight forward and you can immediately tell that it's representing the particular item. 

Abstract:

The second design is a cover illustration made by Milton Glaser, it is a very successful abstract design because of its beautiful lines and contrast. The image is abstractive yet illustrative because it's defiantly clear of the person's face, the abstract part is in the white space. It is abstractive by the reddish shapes inside of the person's face which makes the image more dimensional. Created a strong support for the colorful face as the focal point. The last part of the image is its text, the text is set in white which contrasts the black background. The typeface of the font is modern and edgy, the straight and horizontal lines in the text contradicts the curvy lines for the graphic, while the curvy part of the text and the overall set up really complements the graphic. The entire design is very well balanced by its contrast in color, shape and composition and with a great touch of abstraction.

 Symbolic:

The third design is a symbolic image. The symbolic image can be either simple or complex. This example is a quiet complex symbolic image. The image has three animals in the circled wheel. An eagle, a snake, a frog. The eagle that sits on top of the image is the symbolic for freedom and pride. The snake in the middle is the symbolic for complex and evil, with the frog in the bottom, the frog is the symbolic for wealth and long life. The overall composition has a very mystery feeling to the viewers. The black and white color provides a neutral emotions. It is a complex symbolic image.

Week One Post:

First Post

This blog is dedicated for my Visual Design Literacy class, design and industry department.

San Francisco State University. Fall 2011.