Week 7 Production and Outcomes

Today’s lecture was on “Production and Outcomes”, and first I’ll be looking at “Interpretation”, both on the part of the viewer and the artist. Controlling how a piece of work will be interpreted by the viewer is very important in visual communication, as you will always have a purpose that you are trying to achieve in the viewers mind. A big influence of this is the artist’s own interpretation of the work based on the culture of the time. This is known as Zeitgeist (literally, “spirit of the age”), and can be seen in many places if you look for it. An example of this can be seen in the portrayal of the “good” characters (particularly superheroes) in the 30’s 50’s, compared to now. In the past, heroes will always be purely good and never have any negative qualities, regardless of any kind of traumatic upbringing. Obviously these kind of characters still exist in places, but are not close to as widespread, whereas media now has much more variety (and perhaps more humanity) in the characters, ranging from brooding heroes to ruthless anti-heroes and even sympathetic villain-protagonists. There could be many cultural factors relating to this, and it is difficult to analyse a time period that you are living in, but it may be that with the birth of the information age with the world at our fingertips, we are now very much desensitized to the idea of death.

Compare Batman in the 40’s in which he will never, ever kill...

...To the 2000’s *spoiler alerts*, in which he has deliberately left his mentor to die and blown up a building full of people.

The second principle I’m looking at is delivery. Choosing the correct method of delivery is very important for communicating effectively, as failure to do so can cause your message to go unnoticed, or misunderstood. A very effective delivery of advertising is to give the audience subtle puzzles, so they have to work out the message. Working out the message intrigues the viewer and draws them in, and solving it makes them feel good and associate that feeling with the message or product. A good example of this form of delivery is a certain recruitment campaign by Google. They placed billboards (pictured below) with a complicated puzzle leading to a website with another puzzle, which led to more puzzles of increasing complexity until the dedicated problem-solver would be asked for their CV.

In case you cannot read it, the writing says "first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e"

Week 6 Narrative and Structure

This week’s lecture is on Narrative and Structure. The first principle that I am going to look at is “Stories”. This doesn’t just cover fiction, but any set of causally linked events, of any genre or media, fiction or non-fiction. Humanity as a whole is a social species, and we have always enjoyed stories, whether they be told in cave (or other) paintings, verbally, in books or in films. We are generally more likely to remember things if we associate them with stories rather than just lists given to us. The most important thing when making stories for any purpose – but especially for art and illustration – is communication. There will be an intention to your work, maybe to enlighten, maybe to entertain, but whatever it is it must be communicated effectively to the target audience, in order that they will get the intended message and pass on your story.

Linking on from Stories, is Developing Narrative. All stories have a narrative in some form or another, but at a most basic level, a narrative consists of the conflict between protagonist and antagonist. These roles do not necessarily have to be filled by people or even individual entities (though they almost always are). The protagonist will be the main character, who has some sort of objective, whereas the antagonist will be someone (or maybe something) attempting to hinder the progress of the protagonist, and from their interaction, the conflict is born. This is really what all narrative boils down to.

There are many things that can set one story apart from another, but purely in terms of narrative, something that can make a story much more interesting is in telling it a different way. A good example would be the film Memento (trailer below), which mixes a non-linear narrative with in which the protagonist has a disorder that means that he can only store his memories for 6 minutes, after which time everything from the last 6 minutes disappears. The film is told in a way that mirrors his disorder, as the storyline is split up into 3 smaller narratives which it alternates between in short 5-10 minute sections, 1 starting from the most recent events and working backwards, 1 starting from a few days earlier and working forwards, and 1 starting somewhere in the middle of the two and also working forwards. These segments eventually meet for an exciting climax in which we as the audience have finally seen the protagonist’s entire journey leading up to the end, but are still left confused as we try to piece together the events. Alternatives to traditional narrative can be very interesting, and is definitely something worth exploring in the future.

Week 5 Visual Vocabulary Essay

The first principle that I’m going to look at is Legibility. In this context this does not simply mean how easy something is to read; this principle delves deeper, into how easy it is to identify and understand the intended message behind the piece of work, and how efficient the communication is. Good legibility is essential for the practice of visual communication. Without it, work will look unprofessional, and you will fail to communicate effectively. An example of bad legibility is having text over an image with little contrast between the two, as the image below shows:

The bottom section where the pictures are looks like it has been slapped together by a child, and if it had one it would confuse the message. It makes it look as if the image is not important, but you cannot easily read the text either.

It raises an interesting issue however, as work being difficult to read is not necessarily a sign of bad legibility. For example, on the sign below, the fact that it is hard to read is the intended message, so in this case the difficulty in reading the text is actually good legibility. Similar examples can be found in advertising, where a good technique is to make the message not immediately obvious, as the act of working out the intended message creates immediate gratification in the mind of the viewer that they then associate with that product or service.

The next principle I am going to look at is Tone of Voice. This is the idea that text and image have an equivalent to a tone of voice, so their message can be communicated by their style in addition to the meaning of the word or what the picture actually is. Like with legibility, there are specific instances where applications of the tone of voice can confuse the image where in another situation it might work much better. An easy example of where the tone of voice can confuse the image is with single word images.

If the typeface is not representative of the meaning of the word, as above, then it looks odd. Compare below:

This typeface makes much more sense in the context of the image, and makes it clear that the intended message is a loud shout. There are undoubtedly instances where you could use a conflicting typeface to the meaning of the word, and be communicating effectively, but this would be much more specific and situational. The only example I can think of would be in a graphic novel having characters ‘whisper’ in a huge typeface, and be called out for being unable to whisper quietly.