USA Today

 

USA Today logo - copied from the Media News International website, 16/12/09.

In their book Remediation and elsewhere, Boltor and Grusin (2002) have used the USA Today as an example of graphical conventions moving across various different media, in this case some of the visual presentation of content in television migrating to print and to web and then back again! Other critics on graphic design, Lupton and Millar, have also suggested that the USA Today broadsheet resembles aspects of television news. It also paved the way for ways of incorporating content onto their website. A comparison between their website and the paper versions of same day news stories can be very instructive when thinking through some of the key graphical conventions that survive the transformation from print to screen. If we are to build a vocabulary of graphic design suitable for both contexts (print /screen) then USA Today makes for a good initial case study. In addition, the critical writing on the evolution of this paper, especially its design and layout, gives it further significance.

Introduced in the mid eighties, along with many other papers incorporating full colour into newsprint, exploiting this potential in their graphics, the visual design of the paper was considered to innovative in terms of its design. But in more conservative design circles, as well as amongst journalists, they saw this as a further "dumbing down" of the press, not least with the apparent overuse of information graphics.

These issues as well as a detailed analysis of the logo, a key part of their branding, forms the first case study for the Imaging and Design students in their lecture on "Type, Identity and Branding" next semester.

Composition in Cezanne: a simple task

Paul Cezanne, Saint Victoire, oil on canvas, 69.9 x 89.5 cm.

This image is being used as the first task for the Visual Communications course. After looking at a few paintings and discussing various compositional elements integral to the painting: larger spatial structures, the organisation of distinctive plains and surfaces, the division of the canvas into distinctive zones and the clustering of details, as well as describing where colour abd tome have an impact on the overall composition., students are asked to write about this image. Cezanne had gradually built up his own unique way of responding to and recording the visual world. And whilst there are some conventional ways of organising his compositions that reference neo-classical ways proportions, there are some highly innovative ways that Cezanne has organised the picture plain in a way that, on the one hand, exhibits some kind of 'truth' to the subject - landscape, hillside, houses and trees, horizon etc - as well as creating features that focus purely the sensation of the image - its atmosphere. This is what is so striking about images like this. To gain an understanding of some of the compostional qualities of the above try these tasks.

The task is to simply write down what you see in relation to the following visual attribute:

• colour
• line
• shape

The second part of the task is to draw lines across the image that indicate the main compositional elements.

Space-time and the image: composition in 'La Primavera'

Sandro Botticelli,  La Primavera, c.1462 Tempera on panel 203 cm × 314 cm (80 in × 124 in) Uffizi, Florence

I've  used this image regularly in my introduction to Visual Communication. There are aspects of the composition that are intriguing. The thing to point out is the placement of the groups of figures to the left and right of Venus in the centre. Mercury is far left and Zephyr to eh far right. This suggests that that painting is to be read as at least three episodes of a narrative. This introduces the relationship between framing, composition and time in the image.

Framing is important here on many levels. Not least in relation to the organisation of space and also in the representation of time in the image. It is intuitive for western viewers to assume that, as a consequence of habits of reading, that visual messages are to be read from left to right in a similar way as to the reading of a text. But the opposite is the case with the above image. If the experts are right, the image is a representation of Spring - the title really gives this away. Venus is presiding over her garden. To the left Chloris is being transformed into Flora - the goddess of flowers, having been raped by Zephyr. To the right of Venus are the three graces. Cupid overlooks the action above Venus. Mercury is idly poking clouds. The advent of springtime is indicated by zephyr - the west wind. The progress of spring by Chloris' transformation into Flora. Thus there are three distinctive episodes. Time in the still image. Crude but on the level of composition, very interesting.

Soap Bubbles, ca. 1734
Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779)
Oil on canvas

24 x 24 7/8 in. (61 x 63.2 cm)
Wentworth Fund, 1949 (49.24)

Chardin's image here is used by me in a metaphorical way. This blog is about the visual and uses supposedly important paintings from the past, amongst other images, to prove my points. So, the young man with the soap bubbles is involved in some trivial play. Chardin uses this mode often to display moral and philosophical themes. Here aimless fun, but with a reflective twist. I think I've made my point - this blog is for me a form of trivial bubble blowing - except for the fact that I am hopefully also dealing with important issues to to vith visual representation along the way.

As for metaphors of language and grammar in our work on the image - where does this leave us? Still questioning whether pictures will ever get beyond language. My intuition is that, for some quite simple reasons, that images have to be separate from language and the philosophical literature on paintings seems to bare this out. There is an immediacy of processing of visual material that does not go on when we process language, either written or spoken and it is this that I would go into next. In addition, there is an affective dimension to the processing of images - that there is a physical and visceral association with visual representations that does not necessarily occur when processing language. Both are important ways in which pictures differ from words.

But did Barthes and others who still advocate the primacy of language take this into account? Does the concept of "visual predominance" appear somewhat contradictory when we are still trying to decide whether the image behaves in a way that is different and independent of language? A philosophical and rigorous analysis of these issues will have to be undergone first and before we can actually start the process or act of interpretation.