Redundancy - image and text give the same information, we can get rid of one and the same message will still be relayed to the viewer. E.g. Photo of boy with lolipop - caption "boy with lolipop".
Complementary - we need both image and text to understand the concept. e.g. a flatpack furniture assembly manual normally contains both textual instructions AND diagrams - without the diagrams it would be extremely hard to follow the instructions.
Supplementary - most information is contained in one of the formats (image/text). For example the image might 'supplement' the information given in the text. In a newspaper article about war, the bulk of the information might be contained in the text itself, but a photograph showing a wounded soldier would supplement the text.
Juxtapositional - there's a clash of ideas between the information presented in each format, using irony in many cases to get the message across. For example an ad campaign for a political party - image of a bright sunny beach with "Life is Great!" logo, text beside talking about problems with the current government.
Stage setting - one mode 'sets the stage' for the other mode. E.g. an image at the start of a chapter of a children's book sets the stage for what that chapter is about.
Friday, March 14, 2008
newspaper design analysis
On http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/11/award-winning-newspaper-designs/ we get a good example of some extremely well designed modern newspapers.
My personal favourite is the first one on the list: elEconomista (Madrid, Spain).
The layout is quite complex, yet never looks cluttered - for example on some pages, the text flushes to the shapes of the images (not justified as would normally be the case), yet the 'neatness' of the layout doesn't suffer as a result. The colours are bright without being gaudy - the use of orange, green, black and white as their signature colours is quite daring, but they pull it off extremely well. The shade of green they use tones down the orange, and balances the color scheme perfectly. Expert use of white-space makes everything appear clean and readable.
On http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/01/17_newspapers.shtml we see an example of a newspaper printed in San Fransisco in the 1900's. Interestingly, the layout style is very similar to that of most newspapers printed today, newspaper designers ultimately follow the same basic rules when designing newspapers today as they did back then. Of course designers back then didn't have the luxury of colour ink, all papers up until
My personal favourite is the first one on the list: elEconomista (Madrid, Spain).
The layout is quite complex, yet never looks cluttered - for example on some pages, the text flushes to the shapes of the images (not justified as would normally be the case), yet the 'neatness' of the layout doesn't suffer as a result. The colours are bright without being gaudy - the use of orange, green, black and white as their signature colours is quite daring, but they pull it off extremely well. The shade of green they use tones down the orange, and balances the color scheme perfectly. Expert use of white-space makes everything appear clean and readable.
On http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/01/17_newspapers.shtml we see an example of a newspaper printed in San Fransisco in the 1900's. Interestingly, the layout style is very similar to that of most newspapers printed today, newspaper designers ultimately follow the same basic rules when designing newspapers today as they did back then. Of course designers back then didn't have the luxury of colour ink, all papers up until
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)