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Space

In the past few weeks, we talked about some elements of graphic design. Honestly speaking, I found that I can't mention all the meanings of elements in just 10 weeks, let alone demonstrate the use of this things. But the things I've talked about is still useful, I think I'll choose to talk about the application of the things I've posted before in the final presentation. Let's home into our topic today.

Besides figures in the picture like lines, shapes, texts and so on, we are often unaware of the space around those figures, or we can call it 'ground' since it's like the background of a picture and we put less attention on it. Actually, ground is as important as the figures. It doesn't only provide the place for our eyes to rest, it can also separate and highlight things. For instance, the space between words separate words from each other, and the bigger space around one paragraph separate each paragraph. Moreover, the larger the space is, the more we'll notice the little figure in the picture.

Also, the distribution of the space may give you different feelings. Think of the luxury purse with just a brand outside and it becomes so desirable and also hundred times expensive than the night market one(夜市).

The space outside the Louis Vuitton purse set off the its logo and gives you a sophisticated, luxurious and clean feelings.

On the other hand, though the bag with flower looks great, it doesn't give you the luxurious, simple and clean feelings. In contrary, it shows vigor, complex and the rich color of the flower. Regardless the use of colors of two different picture, you may find what we feel from the bag is quite different.

For more details about the use of figures and ground, maybe I'll mention it in my final presentation. That's it for today and thank you for your reading. See you next week.

Line

Hello every one. Welcome to my blog again. This week I'll introduce the meaning and the use of line to you. Since the article may be a bit longer, I'll choose to use some more pictures to represent my ideas. Wish you can enjoy it.

There are many many things related with line in our world. I'd like to divide it in to two groups which are straight lines and combined lines and curves.(在這篇文章裡面我想把這些線分成單純的直線和不是單純的直線)


- Straight lines -


The uncombined straight lines will have some implicit meaning to us. Like the edge of the tall buildings may give us the feeling of power and strength, while the horizontal edge between ground and sky may let us feel quiet, peaceful.

Besides the edge of different object, lines can use to divide or classify data and information.

Also, a simple line can show the tendency of something. For instance, though the experiment data can seem nonsense, but with the tendency line, we often find some rule inside the complicated data. (The picture is just an example.)

- Combined lines and curves - 


Combined lines and curves are more close to us since most of things aren't all straight lines but combined curves and lines. Though we won't see an obvious black line edge on many things, but the different color of  that object and its surrounding things may still have a blurry edge. It is the edge that ancient people drew it down on the rock to record what they'd saw.

Today, we still use the same way to write down our thought with simple lines. The differences are the way we write today is easier and more systematic but lack of the real shape of the real object. 

Since lines can portray almost any thing we could see, it's an important element in graphic design. By using curves and straight lines, we can show any thing we want without using a single letter. In comparison to the simple straight line, combined lines and curves are more energetic and artistic. Almost everything in the computer is made of  lines. Maybe there are lots of shapes in there but they can be seen as a linear frame filled with colors. Not to mention the designed graphic in our everyday life.

The uses of lines are too many to count. But there's an unchangeable thing that it is the base of any other shapes or art works in the world. It's hard to tell how we use it in our design with just one article. But if you pay attention on everything you see in a day, you'll definitely find something about the use of line. That's it for today. Wish you have a happy weekend.

Color 3

I wish I could graduate from the department of chemistry since I may possibly fail most of my exam this time. As I'm very depressed because my poor grade, I'll try to choose some dark and cool color to show my depression.

But why we feel depressed when we see the cool and dark color?  Let's look at the same picture with a warm color.

Well, although this may seem depressed, but if we assume that he just want to stay away from the sun. It looks fine with the same pose and background. The different feelings of different colors are  all because it's implicit meaning to us.

Think of a lovely morning with yellow warm sun light. When you're under the warm sun, you'll feel that everything is o.k. and you can handle another exhausting day.

But if you find that it's raining outside when you wake up, maybe you'll just stay in your bed and sliding your smartphone all day long. Because every thing looks troublesome and you don't want to take your umbrella walking in a windy rainy day.

Through our experiences in our daily life, we often have special feeling about some of colors around us. Besides thinking of certain object, maybe some of your past or emotion or your depressed high school day with little but continuous rain will be evoked. Since one or a series of colors can give us a special emotion, we often see the application of color using in our everyday life. Like the coca-cola's red may give you a feeling of youthful, energetic and passion, or the yellow of 一信麵家(?) may provide you an expression warm and delicious food. This are all the power of colors.

Since it's close to midnight now, I think I'll stop this topic at here. 'Maybe' I'll add some more things and pictures in this article before Saturday, so you can visit here again at Saturday or just leave a comment below to finish your weekly response. At the end, I wish you and me can all pass the devil like mid-term exam.

Color 2

Hello everyone, I'm glad that you come back to my blog again since we're close to Mid-term exam. This week we'll choose one color(red) and talk about the connections between the color and things. Since I'm running out of time, some implicit meaning of the color and other things will be mentioned on the next few weeks. Hope you can enjoy it!

- Colored things -

Let's look at a picture first.

What would you think about at the first glance? Sun? or a flag of Japan?

This is an example to show how color connect with different shapes. When the color is combined with shape, it is very easy for us to identify what does it mean. And this connection always help us to recognize things more quickly and correctly. Notice that there's a not to do sign above, it's a good example that we build combination between color and the sign made by people. Here's another picture.

Through this picture, I think it isn't hard to find that we're already combined the red color to these trade marks since we saw it on the ads, TV commercials, web pages again and again. The use of color on the trade marks gives us a special feeling when we saw the common trade marks. For example, we'll think of piano or motorcycle when we see Yamaha, or think of happiness and cool soft drink when we see Coca-Cola.

Besides red, we have more colors being used in our everyday life. And there are thousands of things related with color on the world. Thus, our world becomes more colorful and beautiful.

This is the end of the article. Finally, I want to ask some interesting problem. Have you ever thought about why Coca-Cola use red as it's trade mark color?  or why the color of shop signs at xiao fuu 2F(小福二樓) are often red and yellow? We'll find out next week.

Color 1

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. Since color is an important element in graphic design. I'll introduce some good examples of color use around us to you this week and next few week. Hope you can enjoy it. 

Color is everywhere in our daily life. As you open your eyes, you’ll absolutely see at least one color at anywhere. I'm not going to talk about how light works in our eyes or where the color comes from. I'll introduce how color works to affect our emotion, vision, perception even our decision to you.

- Classify with color -

Color coding, which is to use color systematically to choose classification, can let us quickly scan through the information connected to a specific color. With the Taipei metro map demonstrating by different colors representing different routes of  metro, it's easy for anyone to find the way from one station to another if you can read Chinese and English. Next, let's take a look at a monochrome(黑白) version of the map.

I had played some tricks on the metro map and I think it's hard for you to recognize and connect all the route you've known at the first glance. You can try to find all the relationship between routes without looking at the route number, then you'll also find the power of the color. Let's take a look at a little different example.

Besides using color to represent the routes of metro at the previous example, we can also use color to represent other things. The color in the above gif  means the quantity of  rainfall, and with the change of color, it's easy to know where the rain might fall heavily and even the movement of cloud and hurricane.

That's all for today. Next week, we'll see how each color generally means to human, and how it affects our daily life since more and more colors are printed out by human rather than produced by nature.

Typography 2

Hello, welcome back to my blog. Today I'll directly home in to typography and talk about something I think it's important and interesting.


- Serif v.s. Sanserif -

Let's see some examples of serif font and sans-serif font first.

    Serif(襯線體) means the width or the shape of a stroke will change as you write. Also, there may be a small line attached to the end of a stroke. Generally, serif font is easy to read through, more formal and we often choose this style to write an article.

This is the content of calculus textbook.

Sanserif(非襯線體)  means the width or the shape of a stroke will NOT change as you write, and it is seldom attached by a small line. Contrary to serif font, sanserif font is hard to read but it can draw people's attention. So it is widely used for shop signs, topics and advertisements.

This is a poster about music contest.

- Space around texts -

‘Leading’ means the space between row and row. A proper leading can make us read through the whole article easily. However, if the leading is too short , you'll find it difficult to move your eyes from one row to another.

‘Tracking’, means the length of a word. A proper tracking can help you identify the word quickly and correctly. If the tracking is too short or too long, it may take you more time to recognize the word.

If we try to change the tracking of a word, the space between letters will increase equally.

‘Kerning’ is to modify the space between one letter and another to make one word looks more comfortable. For more information please check → #Wikipedia

The above one is the original one, and the lower one has kerned. We can see that the space between A and V is to big, so we change the space between A and V to make it looks better.

This is all for today. Thank you for reading this long article. By the way, because I'm running out of time so I don't have enough time to share my dinner with everyone xdd.

Typography 1

Hello everyone. Before we start today, I would like to show you two pictures.

When I first saw that  shop sign, I found it hard to read it, even a 'mousewritting' one is much easier to read than the shop sign with different colors and all capital words. As we see the shop sign on top, we can find the words are all capital, the respective size of alphabet in a word has different size and color. Hence, it's very hard to verify the word at the first look since we actually recognize the word by memorizing it's 'shape'. Because we still generally convey some information by using texts, the importance of how the words looks like is crucial. That's why we need typography(字體排印學).

It's not difficult to see that the purpose of typography is to make written language(書面語) readable and appealing by arranging the type. There are some tips to let you know how and when to do some arrangement in order to make your layout look more comfortable. I'll mention one today and leave the rest to the next week.


-Size of fonts & space between letters-

Size of fonts often decides which one would be notice first or be emphasized. Just like the topic of the picture above. It's easy to see "The 10 commandments of typography" with the first look. Notice that because the words are all capital so the space between every letter is wider than usual. This can make us easier to read through the topic. So next time when you have a sentence with all capital letter. Remember to modify the space between letter to let it more readable.

As an example, it's much easier to know what my dinner was tonight with the second picture above.


Next time, we'll talk about serif and sans-serif fonts. If you're interest with my silly sentence or my stupid sentence, welcome to my blog next week!

Introduction of visual communication and graphic design.

Welcome back, everyone.

Last week, We've known what's the purpose of design and shown a simple example. This week I'll introduce visual communication (視覺傳達) and graphic design(平面設計) to you. Since I have more information and experience about this two area, I'll talk about it in an easy way and provide some basic concept for you to apply to anything else.

Most of the time, we combine this two together, since we use visual information to communicate with others through the designed graphic such as infographics(圖表),and this two area have lots of overlapped skill and method. As visual communication, we use lots of 2D elements such as color, typography, sometimes combined shapes and lines to convey ideas, feelings, information that we want to represent. As for graphic design, we also use lots of elements and methods to create a cool poster or layout a wonderful magazine cover. It's obvious that visual communication and graphic design work with similar things and have a close purpose.

Next week, we'll start to talk about the elements in graphic design and visual communication, and give you some useful example that you can use in your powerpoint or your art work immediately.

Thanks for reading. See you.

What is design?

Most  people take design as a part of art. But actually, it's more than just a kind of art. For example, all of us may have made power point before, and the process of layout of a page in order to make it more comfortable for everyone to read is called 'Design.' 

"Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system. " is the description of design form Wkipedia. Notice that the description 'a creation of a plan' hints that there's always a intention behind design. As the picture above, it's very easy for anyone to get my game ID  through the first look, and find that it's a smartphone game named 'PAD'. This is an example of why we design and how the design works.

The  range of design is so large that no one can introduce all of them in a period of time. So I'll choose some topic that is closed to us and make a short introduction about it. Besides, I'll also take some photos in our campus and introduce its function and intention in a designer(fake)'s view xdd. Hope you enjoy that. 

# Some contents are copied from wikipedia(Design)