Visual Perception : Feature Hierarchy

Cheers! A History of Beer in Canada, design by David Gee

      

     In regards to feature channels, the above book design is a fun exercise in looking. For me, the 'CHEERS!' title is the pop-out element here, both in terms of scale and color. The words themselves have a hierarchy of their own going on. The designer chose different fonts for each piece of info: title, sub-title, author's name. This factor, along with the spatial layout of the composition, do well to both guide our eye down the page and identify the different pieces of information presented unconsciously.

     I'll have to admit, I'm not completely cemented in my position that the title is the 'pop-out' feature here. I'd say it competes with the blurred image of the Mountie in terms of what I notice first. I say this because we've learned that the anatomy of our visual system is designed to detect what is abnormal or novel. The blurred image is definitely both. But perhaps because there requires more of a cognitive approach to discerning what the blurred image means (drunkenness) - then the quick primal recognition of seeing the giant black and white letters of the title, I will stick with my choice as the color and scale of "CHEERS!" being the first feature channel.

TOP DOWN VISUAL PROCESSING

     Here is an example of a design relating to Top-Down visual processing. We see three elements composing the image, which we've learned is about the amount of objects that our working visual memory can store at one time, so this flyer should work in terms of simplicity. The viewer is likely to fixate on the graphic and then lower their view to the two separate text blocks. This design is goal-directed because it communicates to the viewer that there will be a show of the bands listed and also lists when and where the show will take place. A cognitive goal of becoming informed is available to the viewer of this material - one that has been assisted by the layout of the composition. Someone calling themselves 'Lizard' has created this piece, which I have found on the internet while looking for shows I would like to attend.

GOOD DESIGN / BAD DESIGN

 

Here is a great example of a successful design. It is a visually balanced piece that not only is pleasing to the eye, but clearly conveys the information contained within in a straightforward way. The elements of the octopus-brain along with the 'SATURDAY' and '4/28/12' are a great example of the gestalt principle of closure through the implied triangle they create.

On the other hand, this flyer shows bad design. All the text elements are so splayed out, that there is real no visual hierarchy. I think we could call it Gestalt-Anarchy. One thing that I think is interesting about what's going on in the above piece, is that what was probably meant to convey a sort of frenzied visual stress, is actually rather boring, simply because it's all stress. The designer could have tried to provide a bit of composition by putting the text cutouts in a more, say sharpened layout, but they didn't - leaving the world with one more bad, messy punk flyer. 

(It was probably was a better show than the top one though.)