Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Interplay Makes a Message
Forms acquire new meanings when they participate in
spatial relationships; when they share or oppose each other's mass or textural charac-
teristics; and when they have relationships because of their rotation, singularity or repe-
tition, alignment, clustering, or separation from each other. Each state tells the viewer
something new about the forms, adding to the meaning that they already might have
established. Forms that appear to be moving, or energetic, because of the way they are
rotated or overlapped, for example, mean something very different from forms that are
staggered in a static space. The simplicity of abstraction belies its profound capacity
to transmit messages on a perceptual level that is very rarely acknowledged by viewers
intellectually—flying below their radar—but which they feel and understand nonethe-
less. Manipulating such base perceptions—in concert with whatever representational or
pictorial content might be included—offers the designer a powerful medium for com-
munication.
