Leong Jia En (0348366)
Creative Media Design
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Lecture Notes
👉 Visual Analysis
- An approach to understanding design that focuses on visual elements and principles.
- Description and interpretation of visual structures.
- The purpose of visual analysis is also to identify the choices a designer makes when creating a design and to better understand how the formal properties of a design convey ideas, content or meaning.
- Visual analysis is an essential part of visual literacy, a skill that helps people read and critically interpret images, whether in museums, social media, entertainment, advertising, or the news.
👉 How does visual analysis work?
Visual analysis can include three stages:
Stage 1: Observation - Closely looking at and identifying the visual elements of a design by trying to describe them carefully in own words. It is all about looking, thinking, and finding good language to communicate what is identified.
Stage 2: Analysis - Consider observations and make a statement about the work based on the observational evidence.
Stage 3: Interpretation - The observations, description, and analysis of the artwork are fused with facts about the design work and its historical context that is significant to the design itself.
Visual Analysis
129 million girls worldwide do not have the opportunity to attend school (UNICEF, n.d.). But a girl with courage is a revolution. The girls' education nonprofit, GirlRising, has produced a film that chronicles the stories of nine girls in developing countries, giving audiences a chance to witness how education can break the cycle of poverty. I realized that the problem of educational inequity among girls is still prevalent, so I decided to analyze the GirlRising movie poster as the theme of reducing inequality.
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| Title: Girl Rising Artist: GirlRising (Girls Education Nonprofit) Medium: Movie Poster Year: 2013 Size: 1800 X 2667 Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2444946/mediaviewer/rm3330290688/?ref_=tt_ov_i |
Phase 1: Observation
This is a portrait-oriented poster. The image of a girl, a hand, and birds is displayed in the center. In terms of visual elements, the main colors observed are red, yellow, and white. The main color scheme of the artwork is warm. Organic lines and shapes are applied throughout the composition. The font used in the poster is uniformly uppercase sans serif. The words are placed in the top middle and bottom middle.
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Phase 2: Analysis
This design is symmetrically balanced. The emphasis is on the central image which utilizes the gestalt theory of figure-ground. At the first glance, we may see a girl running with wings. But after we put the perspective in the foreground, we see that is an illustration of a hand. The use of warm colors also creates harmony in the design. Apart from that, there is a visual hierarchy in the design. The first thing we see is the central main image. This is followed by the headline of the poster, GIRLRISNG, as it is in the bold and largest font which highly contrasts with the tagline and body copy. The birds flying from the girl create the movement, leading viewers to read the tagline at the top, ONE GIRL WITH COURAGE IS REVOLUTION. In addition, a repetition of birds is presented here as well. The last element we see is the name of the person in charge of the film, as the typeface is rather small and in a darker shade of orange. Overall, there is unity throughout the composition as the objects are arranged in a way that complements each other.
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Phase 3: Interpretation
This is a movie poster designed for GirlRising, a documentary film directed by Richard Robbins, produced by the social action organization 10x10, and released in 2013. The movie features stories of nine girls from different developing countries who overcome hardships to gain an education and change their lives (Watch the Award-Winning Documentary | Girl Rising Education Nonprofit, n.d.). Each girl had her story written by a writer from her country and voiced by renowned actors. The film harnesses the power of storytelling to change the way the world values girls and their education. The tagline “ ONE GIRL WITH COURAGE IS REVOLUTION” inspires change and growth for girls and women in the community and around the world. The image of a girl with wings and birds flying high symbolizes the hope of girls standing up bravely against injustice and pursuing education, while the hands symbolize caring and working together to help them. The film has successfully become a global movement of individuals, communities, and governments committed to changing the injustices of girls and the way girls' education is valued (Horansky, 2014).
Trailer :
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| Title: Brave Girl Rising Artist: Ashley Lukashevsky Medium: Movie Poster Year: 2019 Size: 18 X 24" Source: BRAVE GIRL RISING FINE ART PRINT – Amplifier Store |
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| Source: https://pin.it/7spZTRP |
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| Source: https://pin.it/223x99w |
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| Source: https://pin.it/AE1cbDN |
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| Source: https://pin.it/58Rvqec |
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| Draft 1 & 2 |
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| Idea 1 "Girls deserve equal education." |
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| Idea 2 "Girls Rights Are Human Rights" |
Feedback
For idea 2, text and images need to have a visual hierarchy. The boy's book can be more colourful than the girl's to make a contrast. Slogan should be more specific to education, not general and vague like girls' rights. Overall, the second idea is more influential in working together than the first idea.
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| Idea 2 (refine) "Education is Every Human Right" |
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| Idea 3 "Every Child Deserves Education Right" |
As suggested by Dr. JinChi, I rearranged the slogan and characters to create a visual hierarchy. In addition, I also changed the more specific educational slogan "Every Child Deserves Education Right" and added statistics on girls who are still out of school. But I wasn't satisfied with this work, so I tried redesigning the background, changing to a darker black to accentuate the characters and slogan, creating a contrast.
Feedback
For idea 3, the words "every" and "education" are better to align with the boy's foot, while the word "deserves" can be superimposed on a girl's skirt. Therefore, girls' skirts can use a darker tone of colour to make the words more clearly visible. Also, the words can be slightly higher. The UNESCO logo can be added to the upper right corner, and the font in the upper middle can be slightly lower, which is more comfortable than being too close to the edge of the photo. Likewise, the font is overlaid on the book after moving below, so the colour of the book needs to be darker in order to make the font to be clearly visible.
Education is a basic human right for all and is important for everyone to make the most of their lives. Having an education helps people to access all of their other human rights. Education improves an individual’s chances in life and helps to tackle poverty. But worldwide over 130 million girls are still out of school for social, economic, and cultural reasons. Hence, this poster aims to raise awareness of the girls’ right to education. It encourages change and helps girls understand the rights they are entitled to. Our gender should not determine whether we get an education as it is not a privilege but a basic human right.
Reflection
I think this project is very meaningful because we took the opportunity to understand the injustices in society and design impactful works to reduce the related issue. Through visual analysis, it not only increased my knowledge of design principles and analysis ability, but also allowed me to discover through research that there are many inequalities in the society, among which many girls around the world are still out of school, which has become the theme of my project. I enjoy the process of exploring ideas, which allows me to stimulate my imagination to create works with positive energy and creativity. Based on Dr. Jin Chi's feedback, I realized some design principles that I neglected such as visual hierarchy and alignment. This experience helped me have a much greater grasp of design principles.
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