Feature Hierarchies

"Pop-Out" Effect

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mce3g4je511qf6477o1_500.jpg

Feature Hierarchy in Visual Queries

All three of these images are CD covers of some of my favorite bands. In all of these are examples of feature hierarchy and visual queries.

http://www.freecodesource.com/album-covers/B004IDV2KC--hoobastank-is-this-the-day-album-cover.html

The Hoobastank “Is this the Day?” album cover uses a sort of pathway in its design. First the use of color contributes to directing the viewer’s eyes. By using a gradient of gray in the left center, an infinity sign “pops-out” which in fact is Hoobastank’s logo. Also by using this color, it directs eye movement from that point and onto the right side. By following the shape of the letters in its spatial layout the eye is able to see the form of a guitar.  

http://www.lyricspond.com/artist-mute-math/album-reset

For the Mutemath album cover I found myself looking at the top title then towards the middle down to the bottom and back up again. I realized that in this design there were three points that caused this eye movement. From the top left corner my eyes follow from left to right where you can see the band name Mutemath in its full extended and elongated form filling the top portion of the cover, from there my eyes continue to the right middle towards the silhouette of a city which is created with various shapes and defined by a darker orange color to contrast the background. Finally my eyes go back to the left into the bottom corner where again color and patterns establish contrast, here we see the name of the album “Rest”. Solving the reason for my eye movement I was able to find the pattern (pattern finding) and realized the entire album forms the shape of a triangle.   

http://www.cdstarts.de/kritiken/88139-Incubus-Light-Grenades.html

In this Incubus “Light Grenades “album cover color is an obvious contribute to feature hierarchy. By using the color red, the eyes create a bias and makes all that one color stand out. This bias directs the eye to find more red. By outlining the band name and filling the title of the album in red we can quickly identify them. Were as, though the largest portion of the design, the grenade in the center does not stand out as much because it is black and white and is overlooked by the red heart in the center of it.

Top Down

Being a visual communications major I chose a graphic image called Day-vs-Night created by Tang Yau Hoong. Using positive and negative space, this is a great example of Top-down visual processing.  The two different colors of black and yellow create eye movement for the viewer. Though the yellow background demands the attention the most, other factors in color direct the viewer’s eyes elsewhere. The blue color creates a bias in favor of signals to help amplify the color.  In using the color blue on both birds it “increases amplification” to focus the viewer’s eyes to both locations. The jagged edge patterns give visual information to the viewer which is then combined with nonvisual concepts to help the viewer perceive that the pattern creates trees in both the day and night.  

http://shop.tangyauhoong.com/product/day-vs-night

Syntactical Guidelines

http://readymade99.com/portfolio/childrenshopetransposter.html

The picture above is an example of bad design. With the use of color, scale and motion it is hard to focus on this graphic. The bright yellows throughout this design cause a bit of eye strain to the viewer which makes it difficult to read. The amount of information causes the scale of the lettering to be small and harder to read and makes "the eye must struggle to analyze" (Dondis, 28) the information causing ambiguity. The arrow in the top center causes the reader to focus on it with the intent to follow movement but it is not bring the reader to the important information given.

http://maptohealth.tumblr.com/post/21330358446/protein-your-diet-great-sources-of-protein

This information design layout above is an example that follows good syntactical guidelines. Using horizontal-vertical constuction this graphic creates balance. Without having to be abtained unconsciously, this design visually creates a felt axis. Following the "scanning pattern that responds to the left-lower perceptual pull" makes it easy to understand the information given (Dondis, 29). The colors used do not cause strain and are used to supply more information in grouping.