by Ellen Lupton
Perception isn’t just visual.1 As we walk through a city street or shady forest, layers of sound surround us. We navigate this complex sensory environment by intuitively associating sounds with objects, from the drumbeat of footsteps to the song of a bird and the shriek of an ambulance.
How Many Cars? We perceive two cars, a red car and a blue car, even though our sensory information about the red car is incomplete.
How Many Legs? Based on our knowledge of chairs as well as the sense data provided by the picture, we intuit that each chair has four legs.
The Power of the Gaze The human brain is keenly attuned to facial features, especially eyes. Designers often focus our attention on the eyes. Blocking the eyes can create emotional tension.
Fill in the Blanks Our brain connects the parts back into wholes in this logotype for an exhibition. Philippe Apeloig.
Denying Eye Contact The blocked eyes produce a sense of psychological erasure. Paula Scher, Pentagram.
Grouping
In human perception, grouping serves to both combine and separate. As a process of combining, grouping transforms multiple elements into larger entities based on size, shape, color, proximity, and other factors. For example, we might group three blue circles and three yellow circles into two clusters. Interface designers use the principle of grouping to color-code buttons with related functions (similarity) as well as to position related buttons close together (proximity).
As a process of separating, grouping serves to break down large, complex objects into smaller, simpler ones. When we simplify criss-crossing marks into a few overlapping lines or shapes, the mind turns complex sensory input into more manageable objects.
Grouped for Function This digital control panel groups related actions together.
Project: Six Modes of Grouping
Psychologists have identified various principles of grouping; six common ones are diagrammed above. Designers often manipulate one or more principles of grouping in order to create images or compositions that are clear and focused or unsettled and surprising. Interesting effects emerge when we use our powers of perception to reassemble lines, shapes, or images that have been pulled apart or interrupted. Grouping prompts the observer to build parts into wholes.
Designers were challenged to create a series of diagrams that use a common language of line, shape, scale, and/or color to demonstrate six principles of grouping. As a starting point, designers researched the range of diagrams typically used by psychologists to demonstrate these principles, such as those shown above. Nick Fogarty, Laura Brewer-Yarnal, Angel Kim, Trace Byrd, Typography II. Ellen Lupton, faculty.
Simplicity We see two circles rather than three odd shapes.
Similarity We see two groups based on the size of the elements.
Proximity We see two groups based on the closeness of the elements.
Closure We close the gap in the shape.
Continuity We see two long lines crossing rather than four short lines converging.
Symmetry We tend to close symmetrical forms to make a single object.
Simplicity
Similarity
Proximity
Closure
Continuity
Symmetry
Simplicity
Similarity
Proximity
Closure
Continuity
Symmetry
Project: Grouping + Typography
At its most basic level, all typography employs principles of grouping. Letters cluster into words (proximity). Shifts in weight, style, or size signal differences and hierarchies (similarity). When we create “lines” of text out of letters and words, we exploit the power of continuity, which sustains the illusion of a single gesture or path.
This project encourages designers to experiment with the basic principles of typography. Each student creates multiple interpretations of a given text by using spacing, composition, and alignment. Designers explore the impact of principles such as proximity, similarity, continuity, and closure to create new patterns of meaning that exploit the mind’s ability to reconnect fragments and build wholes out of parts. The text in this project comes from the Bill of Universal Human Rights. Typography II. Ellen Lupton, faculty.
Proximity The disordered letters cluster together to form words. Devon Burgoyne.
Continuity The converging words read as two lines crossing. Laura Brewer-Yarnall.
Closure Our powers of perception close the gaps in the letterforms. Angel Kim.
Broken Curves The lines break into panels of color wherever they cross over other lines, yet our powers of perception make them hold together. Felix Pfäffli, Feixen.
Proximity The letters in this neo-Dada poster have been scrambled and mismatched, yet they still read as words because they cluster into groups. Designers United.
Similarity The words have been split apart across the surface of the poster, but color helps reunite the parts. Felix Wetzel.
Figure/Ground
A stable figure/ground relationship exists when a form or figure stands clearly apart from its background. Most photography functions according to this principle, where an obvious subject is featured within a setting.
Reversible figure/ground occurs when positive and negative elements attract our attention equally and alternately. In stripes of equal width, each set of lines can come forward or recede as our eye perceives it first as dominant and then as subordinate. Reversible figure/ground motifs appear in ceramics, weaving, and crafts produced in cultures across history and around the globe.
Images and compositions featuring ambiguous figure/ground challenge the viewer to find a stable focal point. Figure flows into ground, carrying the viewer’s eye in and around the surface with no discernible assignment of dominance. Cubist paintings mobilize this ambiguity.
Stable
Reversible
Ambiguous
Interwoven Space
Designers, illustrators, and photographers often play with figure/ground relationships to add interest and intrigue to their work. Unlike conventional depictions where subjects are centered and framed against a background, active figure/ground conditions churn and interweave form and space, creating tension and ambiguity.
Optical Interplay This mark for Vanderbilt University employs a strong contrast between rigid form and organic counterform. The elegant oak leaf alternately sinks back, allowing the letterform to read, and comes forward, connoting growth, strength, and beauty. Malcolm Grear, Malcolm Grear Designers.
Artful Reduction A minimal stack of carefully shaped forms, in concert with exacting intervals of spaces, instantly evokes this architectural landmark. Malcolm Grear, Malcolm Grear Designers.
Concept Sketching
Fast, informal visualizations allow designers to explore different figure/ground relationships in a low-risk environment that fosters invention and discovery. While verbalizing ideas helps designers build a bank of potential concepts, sketching pushes these ideas closer to reality. Multiple sketches yield a more valuable process than single sketches, as drawings begin to speak to one another, opening the mind and eye to new connections.
Search and Find The designer explored multiple iterations of core symbols in order to create emotionally charged icons that compress multiple ideas into a single image. Chen Yu, The Illustrated Poster.
Letterform Abstraction In this introduction to letterform anatomy, students examined the forms and counterforms of the alphabet in many font variations, eventually isolating just enough of each letter to hint at its identity. Each student sought to strike a balance between positive and negative space. Typography I. Jennifer Cole Phillips, faculty.
Is Negative Space a Privilege of the Rich? This poster challenges designers’ attraction to “white space” by analyzing (and materializing) the distribution of unprinted areas in magazines designed to appeal to readers with different levels of wealth. Sally Maier, MFA Studio.
Retouched Figure becomes ground and interface becomes im
age in this poster about digital manipulation. Shiva Nallaperumal, MFA Studio. Winner, 4th Biennial Graphic Design Festival, Breda, Netherlands.
Trafficked Luggage tags represent proof of ownership when baggage is moved from one destination to another via modern transportation networks. In this poster about the scourge of human trafficking, a female figure has been cut from a luggage tag, taking shape as negative space. This vulnerable, voided body has been stripped of identity. The bar code is scannable, linking readers to critical information about the magnitude and economics of human trafficking. The poster was exhibited in the Netherlands, a country where prostitution is legal and trafficking is endemic. Katrina Kean, MFA Studio. Winner, 4th Biennial Graphic Design Festival, Breda, Netherlands.
No Entry These crudely punched letters are readable against the sky and sea, whose contrasting value lights up the message. Jayme Odgers.
Counter Hand The simple device of cut white paper held against a contrasting ground defines the alphabet with quirky style and spatial depth. FWIS Design.
1. For an outstanding introduction to the science of perception, see Michael Haverkamp, Synesthetic Design: Handbook for a Multisensory Approach (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2013).
Interface Overload Graphic interfaces are a constant presence throughout the design process. Here, the interface itself—and its excessive accumulation of windows—becomes a design object. Yeohyun Ahn, MFA Studio.
Framing
[The frame] disappears, buries itself, melts away at the moment it deploys its greatest energy. The frame is in no way a background . . . but neither is its thickness as margin a figure. Or at least it is a figure which comes away of its own accord. Jacques Derrida
Frames are everywhere. A picture frame sets off a work of art from its surroundings, bringing attention to the work and lifting it apart from its setting. Shelves, pedestals, and vitrines provide stages for displaying objects. A saucer frames a tea cup, and a place mat outlines the pieces of a table setting.
Modern designers often seek to eliminate frames. A minimalist interior avoids moldings around doors or woodwork where walls meet the floor, exposing edge-to-edge relationships. The full-bleed photography of a sleek magazine layout eliminates the protective, formal zone of the white margin, allowing the image to explode off the page and into reality.
In politics, “framing” refers to explaining an issue in terms that will influence how people interpret it. The caption of a picture is a frame that guides its interpretation. A billboard is framed by a landscape, and a product is framed by its retail setting. Boundaries and fences mark the frames of private property.
Cropping, borders, margins, and captions are key resources of graphic design. Whether emphasized or erased, frames affect how we perceive information.
Frames create the conditions for understanding an image or object. The philosopher Jacques Derrida defined framing as a structure that is both present and absent.1 The frame is subservient to the content it surrounds, disappearing as we focus on the image or object on view, and yet the frame shapes our understanding of that content. Frames are part of the fundamental architecture of graphic design. Indeed, framing is one of the most persistent, unavoidable, and infinitely variable acts performed by the graphic designer.
An interface is a kind of frame. The buttons on a television set, the index of a book, or the toolbars of a software application exist outside the central purpose of the product, yet they are essential to our understanding of it. A hammer with no handle or a cell phone with no controls is useless.
Consider the ubiquity of interfaces in the design process. The physical box of the computer screen provides a constant frame for the act of designing, while the digital desktop is edged with controls and littered with icons. Numerous windows compete for our attention, each framed by borders and buttons.
A well-designed interface is both visible and invisible, escaping attention when not needed while shifting into focus on demand. Once learned, interfaces disappear from view, becoming second nature.
Experimental design often exposes or dramatizes the interface: a page number or a field of white space might become a pronounced visual element, or a navigation panel might assume an unusual shape or position. By pushing the frame into the foreground, such acts provoke the discovery of new ideas.
This chapter shows how the meaning and impact of an image or text changes depending on how it is bordered or cropped. Frames typically serve to contain an image, marking it off from its background in order to make it more visible. Framing can also penetrate the image, rendering it open and permeable rather than stable and contained. A frame can divide an image from its background, but it can also serve as a transition from inside to outside, figure to ground.
Camera Frames
The mechanical eye of the camera cuts up the field of vision in a way that the natural eye does not. Every time you snap a picture with a camera, you make a frame. In contrast, the eye is in constant motion, focusing and refocusing on diverse stimuli in the environment.
Frames Inside of Frames Frames exist throughout the environment. The photographs shown here use the tool of the camera to create not only the outer frame of the shot, but to discover inner frames as well. Sarah Joy Jordahl Verville, MFA Studio.
Framing and Reframing Here, the artist rephotographed pictures collected from the history and future of his own family in environments that are endowed with both historic and contemporary detail. Jeremy Botts, MFA Studio. Corinne Botz, faculty.
Cropping
By cropping a photograph or illustration, the designer redraws its borders and alters its shape, changing the scale of its elements in relation to the overall picture. A vertical image can become a square, a circle, or a narrow ribbon, acquiring new proportions. By closing in on a detail, cropping can change the focus of a picture, giving it new meaning and emphasis.
By cropping a picture, the designer can discover new images inside it. Experiment with cropping by laying two L-shaped pieces of paper over an image, or look at the picture through a window cut from a piece of paper. Working digitally, move an image around inside the picture frame in a page-layout program, changing its scale, position, and orientation.
New Frame, New Meaning The way an image is cropped can change its meaning completely. Yong Seuk Lee, MFA Studio.
Margins and Bleeds
Margins affect the way we perceive content by providing open spaces around texts and images. Wider margins can emphasize a picture or a field of text as an object, calling our attention to it. Narrower margins can make the content seem larger than life, bursting at its own seams.
Margins provide a protective frame around the contents of a publication. They also provide space for information such as page numbers and running heads. A deep margin can accommodate illustrations, captions, headings, and other information.
Bleeds The picture is reproduced at the same scale in each instance, but its intimacy and impact change as it takes over more or less of the surrounding page.
Margin A margin creates a protective zone around an image, presenting it as an object on a stage, a figure against a ground. Margins can be thick or thin, symmetrical or asymmetrical. A wider margin can add formality to the image it frames.
Full Bleed An image “bleeds” when it runs off the edges of a page. The ground disappears, and the image seems larger and more active.
Partial Bleed An image can bleed off one, two, or three sides. Here, the bottom margin provides a partial border, yet the photograph still has a larger-than-life quality.
Framing Image and Text
An image seen alone, without any words, is open to interpretation. Adding text to a picture changes its meaning. Written language becomes a frame for the image, shaping the viewer’s understanding of it both through the content of the words and the style and placement of the typography. Likewise, pictures can change the meaning of a text.
Text and image combine in endless ways. Text can be subordinate or dominant to a picture; it can be large
or small, inside or outside, opaque or transparent, legible or obscure. Text can respect or ignore the borders of an image.
