Design Principles - Task 2 - Visual Analysis

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Week 3 - Week 5
2024.02.21 - 2024.03.10

Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180

Design Principles / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University

Task 2: Visual Analysis


Table of contents

1.  MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)

2.  WHAT IS VISUAL ANALYSIS?

3.  CHOSEN DESIGN

3.1 Observation

3.2 Analysis

3.3 Interpretation

4. REFERENCES

5. CLASS FEEDBACK

6. REFLECTION

6.1 Experience

6.2 Observations

6.3 Findings

7. FURTHER READING


1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)

This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:

File 1.1 Module Information Booklet (PDF)


2. WHAT IS VISUAL ANALYSIS?

Visual Analysis involves understanding design through examining its visual elements and design principles. This process helps designers assess how well the visual elements communicate the intended message/function of the design to the viewer.

Looking further into it, visual analysis can also help to:

  • Enhance aesthetics: improve their initial design to become more visually appealing after visual analysis
  • Improve viewer experience: designers put themselves into the viewer's shoes by doing visual analysis on their own or another's design
  • Strengthen decision-making: visual analysis helps designers pick out a design's strengths and weaknesses and improve on them in the future.

3. CHOSEN DESIGN

As decided in Task 1, I decided to go for "Life Below Water" as my chosen UNSDG goal to analyse a design relating to it on:

Fig. 3.1 "Overfishing"
Feliana Sutanto
159mm x 225mm
Traditional Watercolour, Poster

3.1 Observation

This poster is in a portrait format. In the upper right/upper half of the design is a big net with overcrowding fishes and a few stray sharks, stingrays and shrimp caught in the mix. In the bottom left/bottom half is a lone fish accompanied by the phrase "How Am I Expected To Survive?" along with text of a quote and organisation at the very bottom. Overall, the style of the poster is simple and uses blue and slightly green hues to represent the ocean surrounding. (87 words)

3.2 Analysis

This design is balanced as it follows the "Golden Ratio", starting from the lone fish and expanding outwards. The lone fish becomes a focal point (emphasisbecause it is white against the blue-hued net and the surrounding water. The text to right of the fish helps to also guide the viewer's eyes towards the congested net. The repeated designs of the same fish within the net helps to create the "congested" or "crowded" feel which highly contrasts to the single fish outside in the empty ocean. The sizes of both subjects and text create hierarchy whereby the illustrations are the main focus followed by the small text in the bottom left. (116 words)

3.3 Interpretation

Fig. 3.3.1 Image A - Character Design and Children by Luke Scriven (Source)

Fig. 3.3.2 Image B - Children's Book Art by Rรฉka Kovรกcs (Source)

This poster is of advocacy to a sustainability movement in Green Peace made by Feliana Sutanto. To me, this poster reminds me of something a person would find in a children's book illustration with its sketchy style and watercolour medium. Since those kind of illustrations need to be illustrated properly to effectively convey a message (Chhabria, N., 2023), I feel like this style is good for this poster since the negative message of overfishing would be easily digestible by any audience. As seen in both Image A & B, simple watercolour-styled children's book illustrations can still convey plenty of emotion (curiousity etc.). The simplicity of the style also helps to convey the innocence of the Blue Fin Tuna, showing that they don't have a choice in the slow eradication of their species caused by overfishing (WWF, n.d.). (137 words)

ReferenceChhabria, N. (2023, September 15). The Power of Visual Storytelling: Exploring illustration in children’s books. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-visual-storytelling-exploring-illustration-books-chhabria - Bluefin Tuna (n.d.). World Wildlife Fund. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/bluefin-tuna

(Total no. of words: 335 words)


4. REFERENCES


5. CLASS FEEDBACK

Week 4

Class: *did not attend classes as I was in Japan for Intercultural Design*

General Feedback: -

Specific Feedback: -


Week 5

Class: Briefing on Task 3 and final feedback session of Task 2.

General Feedback: E-Portfolio needs to include class summaries, feedback, reflection and further reading.

Specific Feedback: Remember to include two other examples in the interpretation phase of my analysis and explain in the description the similarities.


6. REFLECTION

6.1 Experience

Compared to the first task, this task was slightly more analytical in terms of explaining the design principles and so I found it to be slightly more enjoyable. During the first half of the task though, I had a study trip to Japan so my commitment to this task was unfortunately lowered a bit. But once I got back to Malaysia, I prioritized finishing this task as fast as I could before the deadline. 

6.2 Observations

During my study trip in Japan, I managed to see a lot of street art as well as architecture that appealed to my eyes because of how they used design principles to their advantage. I realised I started to analyse small everyday things and tried to find any sort of "easter egg" design principles that were visible to me. It sort of became a game to me just so I could test my knowledge of the module. (⸝⸝แต•แด—แต•⸝⸝)

6.3 Findings

Like the previous task, I found that this one was also easy to do. The only thing that complicated it was my own personal commitment to the task that to finishing the task to the point that some of the parts of this task, to me, was a bit rushed. I still learnt quite a lot though despite not performing as well as I wish I could have.


7. FURTHER READING

Fig. 7.1 "Interaction of Colour" by Josef Albers, 1963 (Source)

Through the 2 weeks I had for this task, I managed to quickly read through "Interaction of Color" by Josef Albers. The book is like a short yet deep dive into the world of colors. Albers throws out all the old traditional rules and shows the reader how colors really interact with each other. The book has cool exercises and visual experiments to really help the reader see colour in a new way. I'd recommend this book to students who wanna study the effective use of colours to enhance their own designs/works!

Fig. 7.2 Plates, page 76.

Above is an example of the Bezold Effect, a phenomenon in color perception where a color's appearance changes when surrounded by different colors. Specifically, when a color is surrounded by lighter or darker colors, its perceived hue, saturation, or brightness can shift. When comparing both pictures, the red bricks against the white mortar (the gaps between the bricks) appear more lighter than the bricks against the black mortar. This is because the relationship of dark and light colours affect how the red appears to the human eye even though both reds are the same.

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