ITAP Lecture 3: Legibility and Visual Hirearchy

ITAP 3

Legibility and Tone of voice

Legibility
Within visual communication there are a number of factors that have to be considered when producing a piece of work. After research and going through the design process you will have a final concept to be produced, and one of the most important things to think about through out this is that the final outcome is legible. Weather it is a magazine cover, a form or a sign post the most important thing is that the information you are trying to communicate is legible and comes across successfully; When working with text is important to think about the size of the text as large chunks of very large or very small text can be hard to read; The colour’s used need to be thought out as well because certain colour’s are hard to read such as yellow on white; When images are being combined with text this can sometimes obscure the who legible the piece is; and the surface the piece is on can effect its legibility eg: computer screens differ from paper. This book cover (bellow) designed by Jamie Keenan, is in my opinion a good example of good legibility combined with creative design. The title and the authors name are in the largest text size, with the quote in the middle in a much smaller text, meaning that you read the more important information first and are immediately informed about the most important information. He has also incorporated the text with an image successfully without detracting from its legibility, partly because the bright red used for the text contrasts with the pale skin colour. there is also no surplus information that isn’t necessary to detract from the important parts.

Another important thing to bare in mind when designing a piece of visual communication is the concept of visual hierarchy. This is the order of importance of the different parts of information within the product you are designing, and how you make it so the audience read or see them in the order you intended. Size, colour, font, type, layers, weight and contrast all effect the visual hierarchy of a piece. To show this in greater detail I have looked at the advertising poster for the film Pulp Fiction (pictured). Here the title of the film is in the largest size text and in a bright yellow which contrast’s with the red back ground all contributing to making it stand out the most compared to the other information on the page. This means that you look at it first which is what the designer had intended because it is the most important piece of information. The second part that I looked too was the image as it takes up the largest part of the page but being in darker colour’s you don’t tend to see it first. After this I would argue that the list of actors in the film would be third in the hierarchy of this piece. The colour yellow used for the text contrasts well with the image but it is in large block of text which makes it less legible and as a result the audience would tend to look at it after the other parts of the poster.

ITAP Lecture 2: Research and Development; Through the ‘visual practice’ of observation, collecting, studying and exploring, illustration can contribute to a deeper understanding of the subject. AND An understanding and knowledge of ‘an audience’ can enhance and focus the communication.

When producing work as an artist the practice of observation, collecting, studying and exploring, illustration is vital to the progression and furthering a deeper understanding of the particular subject; in this case illustration. To have a basic understanding of a subject such as illustration you have to have looked at and studied the subject as to what it means and is, by researching the history of it and those who practice in this field as well as its contemparay use. When doing this it is good to use as much and varied information as is available. This then needs to be an on going process to further develop skills and understanding. To begin to develop an understanding of this field a number of different methods can be used such as researching artists, looking at examples of their work and analysing them as well as finding examples of sketchbook work and interviews or commentaries’ by the artist. Keeping a visual diary or sketchbook of your own is important, to record this research as well as observations, notes, interviews (by other people or your own), critiques, reviews and collecting things that inspire you as an artist and that impact your work. By doing this you can gain a true understanding of your starting point and you can develop your ideas more thoroughly.
The artist BLU has a great website and blog. Bellow are some pages from his sketchbook which he posts online, and also a link to his blog.

http://blublu.org/sito/blog/




When looking to produce a piece of work another vital element in the initial work when generating ideas is to have a substantial knowledge and understanding of the ‘audience’, and this should dramatically enhance the focus and communication of the piece. The subjected audience of a piece of art can vary widely depending on a number of things, if the work is commissioned by an independent or a company for example a newspaper, the selected audience are the sorts of people that buy that particular newspaper. In this case the artist should be researching into these people to create a clear idea of what is expected of the final outcome. An illustration going alongside a piece of political journalism would be very different from an illustration from a children’s book, as the audience’s have different levels of sophistication and intelligence, as well as interests, and it is only by looking at the target audience the artist can make a clear understanding of the different expectations of the work. It will thus make the work more successful in communicating the piece of works message to the audience which is the artists initial aim.

ITAP Lecture 1: Conectivity; Notions of origionality and Can recontextualised ideas be contemporary

In the world of the creative arts, artists and designers are constantly creating new pieces of work all the time, however to what extent are they truly original? A dictionary definition of ‘original’ reads: something ‘preceding all others in time or being as first made or performed… that serves as a model or a basis for making copies’. To create something truly original it has to be the very first time it has been seen in any form, and something that I believe to be inherently impossible to do in this day and age. The idea alone that someone can create something that is a completely original idea is ridiculous, as everyone has to have been inspired by something whether knowingly or not. We are effected by everything we see around us and everything that happens to us, meaning that anything we produce is in some way a result of something else, thus preventing it from being completely original or unique.

Furthermore more specifically when you look at any piece of artwork, going back hundreds and thousands of years, there can always be comparison founds with other pieces of art somewhere else in the world and in history.  This could be because the artist has purposefully recreated another artist’s work or done so without knowing. It could be a pose used, or the composition if a piece, the colour pallet or even text used, it would be impossible to find any artwork that dose not have a connection or similarity to another.

Recontextualised ideas in art and design are pieces created by artist, which directly mimic other pieces that already exist using existing ideas in a different way creating a different meaning or aesthetic. By looking at a often classic or well known piece of art the artist takes the key aspects of the piece and recreates them in a contemporary way this can be done with perhaps playing with the composition or construction or recreating the piece to look the same but in a different medium, for example the cover of the 20^th anniversary of Focus catalogue recreating Lucus Cranach’s Adam and eve painting created 500 years before.  Recontextualising ideas can definitely be contemporary, as all artwork is just a progression of what has gone before it and any piece you look at will have direct comparisons to another piece, so working in this way is just a more direct version of the same process of being inspired and creating. The use of different materials and mediums also keeps the work contemporary as it is looking at the idea in a way that has not been done before. Furthermore if by contemporary you mean relevant to the current time, that would depend on a number of things: the motive and reasoning behind the artist recontextualising an idea, what they are aiming to achieve, and the audience’s opinion of it and thus how successful they are.