(link for Interactive version of chart)
1. What it is
Your visual vocabulary is your set of visual elements and techniques that you use to organize your design world, your approach to the world. Like a verbal vocabulary, the bigger your vocabulary, the greater your ability to command that vocabulary in wide number of circumstances and purposes.
When we talk about visual vocabulary, ultimately we are talking about UNITY of design elements - - these are elements that help UNIFY the design of a work , and create a WHOLE. They can also unify a series of images.
2. Some examples from the past.
Some examples from the history of art & design:
Gustav Klimt lots of decorative elements - oval, eye-shaped, gold, filigree, spirals.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907).
Portrait of Emilie Floge (1902).
Beech Forest (1902)
Laslo Moholy-Nagy geometric elements (both overlapping and tangential) creating angular, geometric compositions.
Komoposition (1923)
Photogram #1 - The Mirror (1922)
Love Your Neighbor/Murder on the Railway Line (1925)
Paul Klee - two works - always playful images, but incisive compositions and great sense of color and light.
Fish Magic (1925)
Head of a Man (1922)
Keith Haring simple, organic, doodly, vibrating, thick lines, playful approach. He galvanized a personal style in the graffiti movement of the 1980's, using elements from pop culture, world culture, and iconography.
3. How to Start
As you work with the materials of design, you'll begin to identify the visual elements and techniques that you will use to forge your own visual identity or sense of style. It takes a long time to develop this, just as it can take a long time to develop an identity as a person.
Start by simply drawing, and observing what you draw. Don't worry about how this is going to be composed in a frame, don't worry if it looks awkward or unprofessional, and at this point don't worry about color. Just start by drawing. Draw, scribble, doodle, for a half hour or so, and don't even pay attention completely to what you're doing.
Once you've filled up a page, fill up another one. Once you've filled up a few pages, start looking for the visual design elements that form the foundation of your sketches: scribbles, shading, cross-hatching, symbols, drawings, figures, squiggly lines, hard rectangles, circles, soft shapes, whatever.
Find the ONE or TWO visual elements that are the basis for most of the doodles, and bring those elements into your Photoshop work, as the most noticeable, identifiable, elements.
4. Starting in Photoshop
So, let's begin by opening Photoshop, and diving into it.
Under File, select New. Name it "drawing1.psd", and set width and height to 620 pixels by 620 pixels (using the square stickypad/post-it notes as reference). The resolution will be 300 pixels/inch, since we want to be able to print this at a decent resolution, as well as save a copy for the web later. We'll use "grayscale" mode, and "transparent" background.
Try working at first with the simple brush patterns, using the brushes to create your visual element. Then try creating larger visual forms by nesting your visual element, by using progressively larger or smaller versions of that element. Some animated examples of nesting.
You can even create a brush in the shape of your element by drawing a rectangle around the element, and selecting "define brush" under the brush menu. Create different sizes of the brush by using the "scale" selection under transform, or just draw smaller versions of your element.
The important lesson to draw from this is to start collecting the shapes, visual elements, and approaches to a sort of visual construction that seem right to you, that seem to catch your attention, that seem to draw you into a world. Your task is to create that world.
5. Sparse vs. Dense: Creating Form & Composition
It's pretty easy to make a solid, dense mess out of a visual element, especially when you've made a custom brush. Can you add another level of design to this by creating form? Start by exploring CONTRAST as a way of creating basic compositions. This can "open" a design, and make it more inviting to the viewer.
And one more Interesting site: Inner City by Stanza (but you need to go to archive - fluxus 2002 - english - interactiva category, and it requires the SHOCKWAVE plug-in
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