Itap – Visual Principles

Tone of voice

When constructing and image or a piece of writing you needs to establish what emotion you can to portray. As every visual we see are minds interpreted into an emotion so when you see and image of a girl blown up by Napalm will instantly made you pity and fearful of the girls life. However reading a passage from a romantic novel will make you feel passionate and loved. So by deciding what emotion you want to get through your work will determine how you image turns out.

For instance the images on book are very important, and need to portray the feeling and content of the book because having a man and woman arguing wont portray a romantic novel and neither will a man reading in a library portray a high action book.  

As an example the book cover for Sabriel by Garth nix is of the symbol used for casting spells (charter magic). The white background represents purity and innocents; this being because a girl aged around 17 takes over her fathers role as an abhorsen who puts the dead to sleep (the opposite of a necromancer).  Plus the fiery symbol represents the possible out come of the main villain in the story (fire, destruction, chaos and the end to all living things on earth).  So this cover represents the story very well and tells the audience what they can expect from it.

Visual hierarchy

When looking at an image there always has to be a place for the more important info or imagery and a place for the less important info/imagery. This is true for a photographer when they take or construct and image. In most pictures the thought of thirds is apparent, as there has to be something going on in each third of the image in both horizontal and vertical lines. This can also be said about posters as they on average have an image in the middle with the title at the top and subtext at the bottom with the actors, director and studio names. However this cannot be said for every poster for every film.

For example this poster has the Title at the top and a main image in the centre but then have put the subtext around the edge to frame it. They have also put the main actor’s name (Nicolas cage) in capitals because he is in the image and plays the main character. This might also be because by showing his name, it will portray the quality of the film. So when I comes to posters the most important info, little film title and a famous actor will be bold or at the top where it can be seen. Then all the other less info follows after in smaller text.

Bibliography

Google.co.uk, www.garthnix.com, The book Sabriel which I have I’m my position, http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/04/01/40-must-see-resources-and-inspirational-collections-for-designers-to-discover-the-best-of-the-web-in-march.html