Visual vs Symbolic Language

Business man, corporate, stress, unemployment, sadness, economic depression, depression, lonely, laid off, father, family.

This photograph reports a man who has just been laid off of work due to an economic depression. He is sitting on the stairs outside of his job wondering what he is going to do for money and how he will feed his family. He doesn't know how to tell his wife and the thought of not being able to provide for his family drops him deep into depression. His suit, tie, and brief case tell me he was working for a large corporation that is suffering from the economy and laying off many employees. His eyes staring at the ground and head in hand say that he is in deep thought and in a dark place. I would say a good replacement for this image would be a man in tears because it would visually represent a similar emotion that this man is feeling in this photograph.

Week 3 Exercise - Feature Hierarchy and Visual Search

 

Music is one of my passions in life so naturally any design that relates to music appeals to me. This music flyer is a perfect example of feature hierarchy and visual search and how a thorough understanding of this concept can really make or break a design. In this case the use of spatial layout,  color, font size and shape really help organize the information into a hierarchy and help highlight what is important. The important information is located toward the top of the flyer and is also colored in orange to stand out from the rest of the information, while the less important information is located toward the bottom in smaller, black font. 

 

 

This Akai drum machine is another great example of feature hierarchy. The pads on the right that are used to program drum patterns are large, dark and immediately attract the eye as they are the most important part of the machine. All of the recording buttons are grouped together toward the bottom left of the machine with the 'record' and 'overdub' buttons in red to differentiate them from the rest of the record buttons. Although the group of buttons at the top-left of the machine are all blue to signify that they do a similar task, color is not the leading hierarchical tool used here. I would say spatial layout and button size are number one here. All buttons with similar tasks are neatly grouped together and buttons of most importance are located nearest the user i.e drum pads and recording buttons. Size of buttons is also hierarchically organized from most important buttons being largest to buttons of least importance smallest.

Week 3 Exercise - Feature Hierarchy and Visual Search