Please contact me via yisha_liu_1992@yahoo.com

Tuesday 16 September 2014

Aesthetic design process-Paula Scher

The first image created by Paula Scher is one of my favourites. Its simple creation of typography has visually formed the ambiguous perceptual experience by having two alternative interpretations. Other than viewing as a group of letters gathered altogether, we can see it as a woman in a dress lifting her leg, especially the letter 'L' is more of the edge of her dress. According to colour and contrast theories, there are only two colours here-black and white, the complete opposite colours are highly contrasted as the figure and background are distinctively identified. The visual construction is most likely displayed as random that words are exhibited differently on different axis and sizes are varied.

The second image I chose is that I think this design is really vibrant and lively, which is full of elements. The proximity from top to bottom in an orderly fashion from the patterns she used, some words are underlined, some are not, but they are displayed within a block-shaped manner which diagonally designed based on modular system. Adding to the colour theory which she used two primary colours-red and yellow, and neutral colour black and white is to construct the meaning of naturalness. But the use of red and yellow for some letters is to highlight some important elements.

The third image is one of the typical examples of showing radial visual construction when all elements are extended from the focal point, the red circle on the left in this case. The highlight of red to the name 'Paula Scher' with enlarged size over other elements ultimately stands out. The background is using the neutral colour-grey which further highlights the group of elements, some are bold, some are less visible by using white. This design largely uses Gestalt's principle-continuation in my point of view, when the radial shape leads my eyes from top to bottom in the flow.

Thursday 4 September 2014

Final postcards design overview



Mind map - Feelings (Hope, peace, love, purity)


I have selected all the components to ideally represent my core concept in this design. As the theme is feelings, I needed to consider the composition I used to illustrate this well. Taken the first postcard as an example, I use large amount of blue to represent the sub-theme of 'hope', also to place the letters 'O' and 'Y' in the middle, is to form a person as if he/she is stretching arms to embrace freedom. The highlight of the letters by using the complementary colours in 4 postcards is in order for viewers to distinguish the abstract shapes of the letters mixed. Colours are essential to be using to relate back to my chosen theme, hence, I carefully selected each set of colours, including the 'white' colour to make my design seem more dynamic. Talking about the saturation values, the two dominative colours such as dark green and red/pink-ish colours in the second postcard, are needed to be highly saturated, whereas the supportive colour, grass green is tint with 30 to 40% of saturation. This is regarding to the colour contrast theory which the darker colour in the background is strongly contrasted with the brighter foreground.