Summary of chapter 10 Create Contrast

  Contrast is an important way to achieve successful hierarchy in a visual design that it can prominently attract viewers’ attention and impact imperceptibly on how to understand a graphic in particular design purpose.

  When viewers perceive a graphic, they always initially try to distinguish objects inside because “During vision, we look for similarities and differences to recognize and identify objects.” (page 182) So separating objects from their surroundings by sharpening edges is an effective way to decrease viewers’ efforts on distinguishing and help them quickly focus on some emphasis. It’s the main reason that people always write black words on white board or place objects on a clear background.

  And vary degrees of contrasts in a graphic also benefit for viewers to establish a hierarchy. For example, designers can place segments with opposing features in proximity and exaggerate some different features to form a visual sequence. In some degree, these difference between objects can also increase viewers’ interests and convey some deeper meaning that viewers will easily make sense about a concert which focuses on piano and violin if designer put a piano and a violin together in the center of poster but place others around edges.

  A colorful picture will be highlighted dominantly if designer put it with black and white photos, viewers will free nervous and sad if they see a little girl with tears besides an active snake in a photo. Well, strong contrasts mentioned above can really emphasize importance and scale and express emotions to viewers.

  There are plenty of ways to achieve strong contrast. Designers can organize objects in diverse level of density and adjust position of objects or isolate one of them to highlight. They can also create different styles, forms and directions for diverse segments to form a contrast. If possible, enlarging sizes of important elements and implementing diverse contrary color into design are both potent ways to achieve strong contrast to catch and hold viewers’ attention as long as the unity of the whole design won’t be influenced obviously. In this case, designers should be prudent when they decide to use colors in different hues, values and saturations to form a contrast because too much color contrast will make viewers feel uncomfortable and bored in a long time. Usually, complementary colors in contrasting temperatures can be used to express opposite emotions and form a distinct contrast directly than implementing other features of color.

  As a necessary part of design, typeface can also form a strong contrast. For instance, bold and italic headlines and titles on a neutral or light color background can easily draw viewers’ attention. And expressive typeface can perform as well as color in different temperature to form an emotional contrast.