Saturday, September 19, 2009

Design Elements/Texture: Exploration of a Good Example


I have chosen this book cover as my example for the use of texture in graphic design. It's a Turkish book and I've recently finished to read. The title of the book is ASK (you should read it as ASHK), which means LOVE in Turkish. The texture goes beyond a simple illustration of a leaf. It is actually a photograph of the radiography of a leaf, but in the shape of a heart. The strength comes from its clarity and simplicity.


For me, good photography is stronger than words. But if you have a good photography and powerful words, even better! If the photography is a good one (like here) then you can trace elements of design, which are well-used too. Lines here are veins of a leaf symbolically resembling veins in the heart. The life brought to leaves through veins is the same like the blood (life) carried by our veins to our heart. The novel tells a modern love story between a Jewish-American housewife and a modern Sufi living in Amsterdam, set against a historical background that narrates the spiritual bond between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. So the shape here is a representational, intentional and meaningful one supporting the title and the content of the book.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Design Elements/Lines - A Self Critique


My design element was "Scale" at first, and Jason had "Lines". He offered to change his paper slip with me and we did :D I was fairly happy with my scale exercise but not with my lines. So thanks Jason for the offer. It has given me the chance to re-do my line exercise and have a bit better snapshot to post.



In Line exercise, the objectives were:

-- To define, explore, and create lines of varying type, quality, direction
-- To create the illusion of spatial depth and texture
-- To explore lines ability to convey emotion
-- To gain experience using some of the basic drawing tools in illustrator.

I tried to create different type of lines with varying quality & direction and explored a bit more what the line is. My favorite part in exercise was creating the illusion of spatial depth by playing with blend tool. It was quite fun to draw very basics lines first and then fill in between. I didn't know what to come up and had fun. But it was a little bit challenging for me to work with lines to create a texture and emotion. My object for texture was close up of an old tree, but I think it looks more like a forest with thin trees and a sun behind. There is always a better one, especially if you are at the very beginning of your learning curve. Could be better but I am Ok with my texture. And creating an emotion was the hardest I guess. Since I love spiders and their nets, my hands unintentionally started to draw a spider net and a cartoon spider. What I felt afterwards were two, actually opposite, emotions. On the one hand, it gave me the emotion of being light but very agile and strong (for the hunter). On the other hand, there was a feeling of fear and falling in a trap (for a hunt). I think with my second try, I did better with lines and overall satisfied with what I did. I gained a little bit more experience with drawing tools in illustrator and gave a better demonstration of the Line element. I had some awareness about the importance of Line through photography, but hadn't had a chance to study it that closer. So this exercise taught me that Line is very simple to draw and work but could be the strongest element of design by carrying personality and expressing emotions.