From the course: Graphic Design Foundations: Ideas, Concepts, and Form

Scenes

From the course: Graphic Design Foundations: Ideas, Concepts, and Form

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Scenes

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- All of us walk through life understanding the world with our eyes and ears. We view the world as a stage. We watch the action in front of us, around us, to determine our thoughts, actions, and beliefs. We spend time watching television, movies, and online content through a screen containing action, dialogue, settings, and places. We see life as a series of scenes. A birthday party, a baseball game with dad, being forced to pose for the family holiday card, college graduation, and visiting your grandmother. The great cathedrals in Europe used scenes to teach an illiterate pre-Renaissance population biblical stories. Illustrators, such as Norman Rockwell, composed scenes to convey an idea. Thanksgiving and freedom from want. Movies have trained us to view life as a series of scenes to convey an idea. The whole town rallies around George Bailey and the bank is saved. Now this all sounds fine and dandy, but in graphic design, the result is an approach to idea making that can be confusing. Consider a typical movie poster. There are often three floating heads of the actors, a setting, and perhaps some action or an odd character. If I know what the film is about and who the actors are, I'm okay. Underwhelmed, but okay. But if I don't, the solution is incomprehensible. I can only guess who the three heads are and what is happening. A couple of dudes and a women at some hotel with an old guy. Here's another example. If a magazine headline reads, Architectural and Engineering News Hospitals, I can show a hospital. But I'm simply repeating the headline visually. I'm not asking the viewer to do any work. And that passive lack of interaction with the viewer is a forgettable solution. These aren't ideas. They are a representation of a scene. The result is open for interpretation and miscommunication. This is where a good designer steps away from the obvious and turns to other means to communicate. This leads to symbols as a shortcut to understanding. Or combining images and words that engage the viewer in a more active way. When the viewer needs to decipher and understand a solution, he or she spends more time and is likely to remember the message. If the design also provides a sense of discovery or delight, it could hit a home run.

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