Tone it down

I found the discussion in Visual Displays surrounding the comparative case studies to be extremely interesting.  As historians we have hopefully become adept at forming arguments in a convincing and lucid manner.  The discussion on verbal parallelism was a perfect example.  Years of writing and reading have ingrained these techniques in our minds so deep that we usually don’t realize when we actually use them.  Our challenge is first to breakdown the devices we use while constructing papers in order to fully understand what exactly we are doing.  Once we have a firm command over this knowledge we can apply it to an entirely new field (for many of us at least) – that of two & three-dimensional design.  How can we incorporate parallelism into our head banner for instance?  Or how can we create a relationship both in terms of content and design?

One difficulty that currently gives me personally the most trouble is the use of color.  As I have said before, I love contrast.  I will admit it right now – I enjoyed the recently released movie 300, not for its dialogue (please), plot (there was a plot?), or historical accuracy (do I even need to comment on this?), but for the visual experience.  I thought the synthesis of the visual and audio aspects of this film was superb.  Yet this type of film would not work well in a romantic comedy.  But how can we as infant designers create a synthesis between our content and design that is both appropriate and engaging.  If I had an answer I wouldn’t continue to ask this question in my posts.  Unfortunately for me, my site would look foolish if it were highly contrasted.  This doesn’t mean that my color scheme can’t have colors that contrast, but whatever bright color (orange is currently favored) I decide upon must be used sparingly as highlighters not backgrounds.

Credit for this revelation is all due to this week’s reading Visual Displays.  The concept of muted and homogenized secondary elements seems so obvious as to not even needing mention.  However this goes back to breaking down techniques that are used so frequently that we are unable to understand why and how they work.  If you refer to my typography site () you will notice that the majority of my colors are subdued or faded.  While contrast exists between the brown type and yellowish-green background, there wasn’t any tension.  The elements work well together, but almost too well in that they blend with one another.  Since I didn’t have a large graphic or picture near the top, there wasn’t a clear path or at least points of interest that the eye automatically follows.  This was why I placed thin, but bright, orange lines periodically near points on the page wanted the visitor to understand were important; the most obvious example being the line separating the nav menu and the main content.

As always please let me know if you think I’m full of it, or if my explanation makes sense.  I probably speak for most people when I say that I cringe when I hear artists or designers speak about their own work.  The work should stand alone, able to communicate clearly whatever argument or commentary the artist wishes to make without verbal aid.  This is exactly what Visual Displays was addressing.  However here statistical analysis and graphs take the place of a piece of art, or in our case a finely written work.  As we have seen so far this semester, everything is ripe for redesign and improvement, even the most basic text.  To date I feel this is the most important concept I have discovered in this course.  I just hope I can master this skill by some point in the near future.