Visual Techniques

http://www.smashingapps.com 

-Exaggeration

-Active

-Transparent

-Distortion

-Depth

-Balance

http://abduzeedo.com/inspiration-andrew-greig

-Balance

-Symmetry

-Irregular

-Distortion

-Intricate

-Exaggeration

-Spontaneous

-Active

-Flat

-Singularity

-Diffusion

-Opacity

The two images above are involved in the visual design industry. One is a advertisement for 7Up and the other is a poster design. Both of them were applied with similar and different techniques by their designers to make them unique looking. The 7Up advertisement uses three dimension look to make it pop out to view's eyes. It's transparent liquid and the animated person on top sends the message of it being "refreshing." It uses very subtle colors compared to the hot air balloon poster. Although there were many techniques used on both images, they have very different effect on viewers. The hot air balloon poster used a lot of colors and sends the message of the colorful world we live in, the message of "possibility." The hot air balloon and what it brings along is very saturated on top of the background that is desaturated in light colors makes it pop out despite of how flat it is. Though it displays movement, the 7Up advertisement does a better job with it because it has depth applied to it. The hot air balloon does a better job in capturing attention because of the multiple color usage. The creators had very different intension when making these images, therefore I cannot compare the two too much. It seems to me that the hot air balloon poster will be like more because of how many noticeable techniques the designer has applied to it.

Contrast

http://xleemac93x.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/composition-photography/

In this example of good contrast. The editor of this picture turned the contrast up in an amazing picture of the sky. The saturation of the sunlight has been brighten to put focus on it. It also makes the sunlight pop-out at the viewer when looking at it. The darken horizon and clouds help viewers from being distracted form the blue sky and the orange sunlight shinning through the clouds. Putting contrast in images makes them much more appealing. The contrast in this image doesn't necessarily give meaning to the image. In my opinion, it shows the beauty of natural things like the sun and clouds. It creates a different focus to remind people to stop and notice everyday views that they may miss.

http://newmethods.orgblog/usability-examples-of-good-and-bad-color-contrast

This is an example of bad contrast. This image is shown for people to know what colors to use for their website's background and foreground. The colors are mostly light on light or dark on dark. Bright colors are especially hard for people to see, for example, the neon green on top of the darken white background. The dark on dark has a cool style to it but it is hard to read as well. Most of what they have on here makes people squint their eyes to see the text, regardless of it being a blurry jpg picture. It doesn't make the text pop-out of the background, with the exception of the red and yellow. If the designer of the match up had used more contrast and used bright colors against dark colors instead, it would be easier to read the color palette number.

Movement/Motion

http://www.imgbase.info/images/safe-wallpapers/video_games/final_fantasy/5695_final_fantasy_hd_wallpapers.jpg

This image on the left is from the game Final Fantasy XIII. Motion is implied in this image from the many things that are out of place in this image. Based on the way this character's clothes is wrinkled, motion is implied. His clothes are wrinkled in an unnatural way, where as if he was standing straight, his clothes would be wrinkled mostly on the bottom, if it was too long. The glass flying in the background implies shows movement because glass would be grounded by gravity if they were shattered. This image shows that it is in between the process of it being shattered and the time it hits the ground. Swords do not usually levitate. From the bright light circling around the objects or displayed right by the swords, it implicates their movement in air.

http://www.movies-wallpapers.net/Wallpaper-Finding%20Nemo/Finding%20Nemo-06.jpg.html

This image is from the movie Finding Nemo. This image implies motion with blurring effects. While the main characters in the middle are seen perfectly clear, the fishes around them are blurred. The stillness of the two main characters implies that they are staying in one place. The blurriness of the blue fish around them implies movement and motion. When things are in motion, especially when they are moving fast, our eyes tends to not receive the image very clearly. By blurring the blue fishes, the designers of this image is showing that these fishes are swimming past the characters. Also by blurring the actual shapes of the fish shows motion because when we see a car speeding pass by us, we tend to not catch the exact shape of it.

Dimension/Depth/Space/Scale

http://www.just-rpg.com/default.asp?pid=1938

This is a image of a basement in one of the fighter's guild in the video game Oblivion.  This demonstrates dimension, depth, space, scale, and size in the world of game design.  The perspective of the player is realistic in a way where it is how we perceive things in the real world.  The weapons in front of the player are relative in size.  The sword on the table, for example, looks larger than the two swords on the rack in the background.  In the game, it is actually a smaller sword but looking at objects in a distant it looks as if it has shrunk in size.  All of the objects in the room are relative and familiar in size.  The room shows linear perspective. The farther the edge of the room is, the more narrow it seems from the player's view.

The Basic Elements - Logo Design

http://colorburned.com/2008/05/grantfriedmancom_logo_concept_1.html
Dots

In this logo for the website GrantFriedman.com, the designers used dots to catch people's attention.  The use of dots has strong visual power as it grabs people's attention.  The designers also used these dots to form something in a larger scale: the letter G, as in Grant Friedman.  It's interesting that the designers of this logo and website used such basic elements so effectively, since website of resources for graphic designers.

http://symbolphotos.blogspot.com/2010/07/fedex-logo-photos.html
Movement

The FedEx logo has an arrow in the negative space between the capital letter 'E' and the lowercase letter 'x'.  The arrow is pointing to the right and in reading the English language, people read from left to right.  With that in mind, the arrow shows forward movement, which represents the company itself moving forward.  This gives people the idea that the company is moving forward, therefore if we choose this company we will be moving forward as well. We should choose FedEx because our packages will get to where they need to be delivered.

http://www.famouslogos.org/mcdonalds-logo
Color

The McDonald's logo uses the basic element of color to it's advantage.  The logo is in red and yellow.  It has been said that colors can provoke certain feelings or affect moods.  When red and yellow are used together it instinctively makes people think of food and become hungry.  McDonald's uses these "hungry colors" to their advantage by putting it on their logo, which most people see almost daily.

Visual Thinking Research

My solution.

 In this puzzle of visual induction, I tried to find a pattern in each square and tried to make some kind of connection between every other block.  I ended up choosing C because it looks simple as the others but did not have any similarity with the other squares, which I somehow made sense of it at the moment, after looking at the puzzle for 10 minutes.

Evelyn's solution.

I asked my friend Evelyn to help me out on this assignment by doing these puzzles as I did mine.  Her answer was D, after thinking over it for about 5 minutes.  She explained her process of figuring it out by putting all of the squares together, merging the shape, which is why she thought the answer was D.

Solution to puzzle number 1.

Both of our answers were wrong.  Though its hard to imagine the lines were based on numbers, after seeing the answer, it seems obvious.  After showing Evelyn the answer, she told me that she has thought of it but it seems too random to be true.

My solution.

In this puzzle of matching, I tried to match these Tetris shaped blocks by rotating them in my mind.  I also carefully looked at where each block connects to figure out which one of them are identical.  Rotating these blocks in our mind is a common strategy but I still got a few of them wrong.

Evelyn's solution.

My friend, Evelyn, used the same strategy of rotation and made sure of where each block connects is the same as the matching one.  It seems to me that she was more careful on where each block connects with each other and because she was, she finished this puzzle correctly.

Solution to puzzle number 2.

Visual Perception Feature Hierarchy

http://www.bart.gov/stations/

The picture above is the BART map.  For those who has ever lived in the Bay Area or lived close to it should know what the BART is.  The bart map uses simple colors and is easy to look at.  Unlike the New York subway route map, the BART map is not confusing at all.  It displays the hierarchy features with different color routes.  To make it pop out, they disregarded streets or highway that are shown on normal maps.  They just made the Bay Area map into a grey silhouette, placed their colorful routes onto the map, and label the stops they have.  To make sure people knows what trains there are and which trains they can take, they enlarge and bolded the text for the last destination.  They placed medium sized white dots on the routes to display transfer points.  I like this map because it is simple and they only show what is necessary.  Their map looks organized and the colors are well used.  It is a good 2 dimensional design for maps.

Top-Down Visual Processing

http://www.findwaldo.com/fankit/graphics/

This image, from one of many Where’s Waldo books, uses the top-down visual process.  Top-down visual processing usually involves some sort of goal we want to achieve.  For those who are familiar with Where’s Waldo, we know that our goal is to find Waldo.  We instantly fix our eye on smaller parts of the image to find a man dressed in a striped shirt and a snow hat with round glasses and blue jeans.  When playing this game our eyes begin to scan all over the image to find Waldo.  They purposely place red and white striped objects in the images to divert our attention from Waldo. There is so much diversity, we sometimes forget which area we have already scanned or we become unsure of ourselves so we would rescan the same area, possibly several times.  After scanning all over the picture and finally finding Waldo, the reward is that we instantly find him for the next couple of times we play until we forget about it.  When that happens, let the hunt begin.

Design Success and Failure in Relation to Syntactical Guidelines

I am a Visual Communication Design major, and I plan to work on advertisement business in the future. I chose two different advertising posters that require very little text to support their effectiveness.

I consider this image successful in advertising their services, though it helps that FedEx is already a well known company. The message I got from looking at this image was, “We will get it to you quickly and undamaged.” It has a simple message and they gave it a simple visual for advertising their services. This is a balanced image. To convey the message that they will deliver your packages safely, they used a neutral color instead of a vibrant color, red for example, that is eye catching or provokes too many emotions.

In my opinion, this image is a failure to its type of visual advertisement. They had the idea of making a minimal text poster, similar to the FedEx poster above. When I first saw this advertisement, I was a bit confused until I read the tiny font on the bottom of the poster which says “Eliminate bad breath.” When I saw the image above, I imagined having a dry tongue which was conveyed through thirst and a sock. It is an imbalanced image. It could be possible that they are using this distracting technique to create the discomfort of 'bad breath.' If that is their intention, I would consider it partially successful in conveying their message.  Compared to the FedEx advertisement, Clorets’ advertisement is considered to be not as successful because it is confusing and can be misleading without text to guide the viewer. Even though they put a message to explain what they are trying to convey, the font is too small and it is hard to see because of the lack contrast between the light grey text and the white background.

Visual vs Symbolic Language WK 4

• Human silhouettes
• Dim colors (sepia) supporting dark mood
• Waiting
• Collage
• Depression
• English terms
• Numbers
• Dollar Signs

This unemployment image from Google contains two newspaper clippings from the employment listings section. The newspaper clippings are under a sepia color effect. On top of the news paper clippings are transparent silhouette of people of both genders and varying height, in a repeated pattern. These silhouettes are lined up from left to right. The news paper clippings are a representation of limited job opportunities being offered while the silhouette of people waiting in line represent those who are waiting in line to compete for the same opportunities, regardless of their gender or ethnicity. Above the silhouettes is the word “unemployment” in English lettering to make sure the viewer understands what this image is conveying.

Interactions Between the 3 Levels (WK3 Meaning)

This Coca-Cola picture shows all three levels of visual design communication.  The representational aspect of this image is a silhouette of a glass Coca-Cola bottle. It can also be interpreted as abstract.  The bottle is also a recognizable logo, a symbol, for the Coca-Cola company.  Their glass Coca-Cola bottles have a distinct shape which differs itself from any other soda pop bottles.  Anyone who is familiar with Coke will immediately think of Coca-Cola when they see a silhouette of their bottle.  This image shows colorful abstract, child-like drawings of planets, food, stars, and random creatures bursting out of a Coke bottle.  Although people do not usually see child-like drawings as something attractive, it does bring back nostalgic feelings of fun, happy times and great imagination.  All of this fun creativity is just waiting to burst out from within every bottle of Coke.  To ensure that everyone gets the big picture of this image, the designer of this poster put “friendship on the Coke side of life” to fixate people onto what they are trying to convey.  They used symbols of text to ensure that people know who this great company is and what they need to drink to feel this great feeling of nostalgia and happiness, Coca-Cola.

Representational, Abstract, and Symbolic Images. (WK 2: Meaning 1)

Sims 3 Character. Representational.

Representational:

The image of this animated woman is from the video game Sims 3.  The game itself is of repetitional design.  It's purpose is to simulate the lives of everyday people.  The designers of the game provide each object and character with very specific details that not many people may even notice without a good graphics card.  It shows the highlights and nearly each strand of this animated woman's hair.  Although this in-game character may or may not be real, it still displays something of reality, therefore it is considered as representational design.

         

An oil pastel painting.
"The Dance of Good and Evil."

Abstract:

This oil on canvas is called "The Dance of Good and Evil," by Curtis Verdun.  This image does not show specific detail on anything that is portrayed here.  From a distance I can see it as a dragon like figure, but I cannot be sure that this is what the artist intended to show.  This image could be argued to be a non-objective abstract image because it does not relate to or represent any real world object.  The colors represent "good" and "evil."  Deriving from the name of this image, we naturally think of the color red to be "evil" because it is normally associated with anger or the "devil."  Blue is a cool and calming color, it can also be associated with purity, therefore most people would likely think of it as the "good" of the painting.  The two colors collides and swirl together, which personally reminds me of the motions of ballroom dancing.

A normal "No Smoking" sign. 

Symbolic:

The "no smoking" sign is one of the most frequently used symbolic designs out there.  Usually, a simple picture of a lit cigarette is shown under bold lettering, reading "no."  From what our parents and the people of our society have taught us, we know that a crossed out circle means "do not do this."  The sign is red for reasons beyond having it catch our eyes.  This color provokes certain emotions in our mind, such as anger and danger, while also signaling our mind to stop, just as we would when we see a stop sign or a red traffic light.  When people people see the "no" sign on top of a picture of a lit cigarette, they would automatically think, "No smoking."