Week 6 exercise-Syntactical Guidlines

Good Design

This is a picture of where the syntactical guidelines work for the targeted user. The wheels are symmetrical, which create balance for the user. The bicycle is functional and desirable to use. Even though there is balance, it is not boring to look at this bicycle with its variation of shapes involved. Such as, the lines that run diagonal, the chain wheel and the wheels and tires. The attraction and grouping is created with grouping a relationship between the two wheels. The wheels are the dominate element of this bicycle, the positive, and the frame of the bike is the passive negative element of the design.

Bad Design

Here is an example of where the syntactical guidelines were put to bad use. This bike could be functional, however it is not for the typical road biker. The chain wheel is extremely big. It creates a sense of imbalance because on the left there is two circle shapes and on the right there is only one. All the stress is put on the big chain wheel. This bicycle wouldn't be very fun to ride up a hill.

Week 5 Blog-Visual Language

The facial expression in this photo expresses the emotions of losing something very important. My mouth is open and my eyebrows are slanted up to show my feelings of agony of losing whatever I was holding onto. The sand slipping through my fingers is a good representation of how it feels to loose something very important.

In profile photographs on facebook, people like to express emotion through facial expressions.

Week 3 Blog-Feature channels and Visual Search

This image is a good example the use of feature channels and visual search. It uses the feature channels of shape and color. First our eyes are drawn to the red rectangle draws our attention to "Typo". Next we're drawn to the yellow colored word "ENGLISH". This relates to my area of study because I am in visual communication and I am interested in the typography aspect of design.










Image: The New typography by Jan Tschichold.
Web site: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/images/books/the-new-typography00.gif

Exercise - Top-Down Visual Processing

Top-Down Visual Processing and My Existing Area of Study

(Image from The Hiser Group (2006). Web site: http://www.hiser.com.au/getting_started/visual_design_-__introduction.html)

It is a diagram of my area of current area of study, visual communication design. It shows elements that are used in design. This image is a good example of a top-down image because it is an image of a diagram. Diagrams capture attention as mentioned in the reading, Colin Ware’s Visual Thinking for Design. The viewer of this is forced to move their eyes around to understand the meaning of the image. The viewer goes from one section of the diagram to another to read the information given. As it says in the reading there is a process of linking and re-linking of the words in the bubbles and the words outside the bubbles.