Author: Neftaly Malatjie

• • • Keep headlines and wording brief – include only the most essential information.

      • Take time to proofread.
      • Choose an easy-to-read typeface. Avoid using all capital letters, stacking headlines vertically or arranging type at an angle unless a special effect is needed. • Vary the size of the type (within the readable range) to show the levels of importance of different parts of the message. Make important information big and less important information smaller.
      • Make samples of text using different typefaces and sizes to see how easy they are to read from the desired viewing distance.
      • 

• • Symbols

    Symbols are designs that are used to represent ideas, processes, directions or things.

    Well-designed symbols:

    • Are easy to recognize, understand and remember.
    • Are simple and bold with no unnecessary details.
    • Are easy to reproduce in small or large sizes.
    • Can be reproduced in one color, especially black.
    • Use “white space” (negative space) as effectively as positive space
    • 

• • Entertainment within graphic design is meant to stimulate an emotional response. To excite, engage or titillate the audience can be very powerful when done right.

    Designers can use their visual communication skills to hold the attention of a person with amusing or diverting visual information/language.

    If you can get a laugh from a piece of design, you’re onto something. 

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  • Emotions have a crucial role for human beings having the ability to understand the world.

    Form and content has the power to be not only informative and persuasive, but visceral.

Creativity is a quality that is highly valued, but not always well understood. Those who have studied and written about it stress the importance of a kind of flexibility of mind. Studies have shown that creative individuals are more spontaneous, expressive, and less controlled or inhibited. They also tend to trust their own judgement and ideas– they are not afraid of trying something new.

A common misunderstanding equates creativity with originality. In point of fact, there are very few absolutely original ideas. Most of what seems to be new is simply a bringing together of previously existing concepts in a new way. Psychologist and author Arthur Koestler referred to this merging of apparently unrelated ideas as bissociation. The fact that creative thinking is based on a knowledge of previous work in one’s field is the justification for teaching the history and foundations of a given field as a resource for future research and creative work. It is possible to develop one’s ability to think intuitively and creatively. The exercises assigned in this class are in part intended to expand these skills.

Thus creativity is the ability to see connections and relationships where others have not. The ability to think in intuitive, non-verbal, and visual terms has been shown to enhance creativity in all disciplines. It has also been shown that the creative process is very similar in all fields. Essentially the design process is a problem-solving process, and the designer, just like the laboratory scientist, will be most successful if the problem is approached in a systematic manner. Successful fine artists generally follow the same pattern in developing their creative ideas, though they may be less conscious of the process they are following. Initially the researcher or designer/artist will tend to experiment in a rather random manner, collecting ideas and skills through reading or experimentation. Gradually a particular issue or question will become the focus of the reading and experimentation. The next step is to formulate a tentative problem, and begin to explore that topic. Eventually the problem is refined into a research question or design problem that the person will then pursue through repeated experimentation. In design or fine arts production, this takes the form of works created in a series. Each effort solves certain problems, and suggests issues to be dealt with in the next work (or experiment). Working in a series is the most important stage of the design process. The ability to experiment, to value and learn from mistakes, and build on the experience achieved is the hallmark of a the truly successful and creative individual, whatever the field.

The table that follows outlines the parallels between design process and classic scientific method.

Reference: Beveridge, W.I.B. The Art of Scientific Investigation, (New York; Vintage Books) n.d.

Emphasis is used by artists to create dominance and focus in their work. Artists can emphasize color, value, shapes, or other art elements to achieve dominance. Various kinds of contrast can be used to emphasize a center of interest.  Emphasis is also referred to as point of focus, or interruption. It marks the locations in a composition which most strongly draw the viewers attention. Usually there is a primary, or main, point of emphasis, with perhaps secondary emphases in other parts of the composition. The emphasis is usually an interruption in the fundamental pattern or movement of the viewers eye through the composition, or a break in the rhythm. The artist or designer uses emphasis to call attention to something, or to vary the composition in order to hold the viewers interest by providing visual “surprises.”

Emphasis can be achieved in a number of ways. Repetition creates emphasis by calling attention to the repeated element through sheer force of numbers. If a color is repeated across a map, the places where certain colors cluster will attract your attention, in this instance graphing varying rates of mortality from cardiovascular disease.

Contrast achieves emphasis by setting the point of emphasis apart from the rest of its background. Various kinds of contrasts are possible. The use of a neutral background isolates the point of emphasis.

Contrast of color, texture, or shape will call attention to a specific point.

Contrast of size or scale will as well.

Placement in a strategic position will call attention to a particular element of a design.

Prolonged visual involvement through intricacy (contrast of detail) is a more unusual form of emphasis, not as commonly used in Euro-American design, though it is common in many other cultures. In this case, many points of emphasis are created that are to be discovered through close attention to the intricacies of the design.