Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
and pictures. The form that is chosen or made, for whatever purpose, should be con-
sidered as carefully as possible, because every form, no matter how abstract or seem-
ingly simple, carries meaning. Our brains use the forms of things to identify them; the
form is a message. When we see a circle, for example, our minds try to identify it: Sun?
Moon? Earth? Coin? Pearl? No one form is any better at communicating than any other,
but the choice of form is critical if it's to communicate the right message. In addition,
making that form as beautiful as possible is what elevates designing above just plopping
stuff in front of an audience and letting them pick through it, like hyenas mulling over a
dismembered carcass. The term “beautiful” has a host of meanings, depending on con-
text; here, we're not talking about beauty to mean “pretty” or “serene and delicate” or
even “sensuous” in an academic, Beaux-Arts, home-furnishings-catalog way. Aggress-
ive, ripped, collaged illustrations are beautiful; chunky woodcut type is beautiful; all
kinds of rough images can be called beautiful. Here, “beautiful” as a descriptor might be
better replaced by the term “resolved,”—meaning that the form's parts are all related to
each other and no part of it seems unconsidered or alien to any other part—and the term
“decisive”—meaning that the form feels confident, credible, and on purpose. That's a
lot to consider up front, so more attention will be given to these latter ideas shortly.
Form does what it does somewhere, and that somewhere is called, simply, “space.” This
term, which describes something three-dimensional, applies to something that is, most
often, a two-dimensional surface. That surface can be a business card, a poster, a Web
page, a television screen, the side of a box, or a plate-glass window in front of a store.
Regardless of what the surface is, it is a two-dimensional space that will be acted upon,
with form, to become an apparent three-dimensional space.
In painting, this space is called the “picture plane,” which painters have historically
imagined as a strange, membrane-like “window” between the physical world and the
illusory depth of the painted environment. Coincidentally, this sense of illusory depth
behind or below the picture plane applies consistently to both figurative and abstract
imagery.
