Learning Activity

Analysing the Use of Design Fundamentals (2 hours)

Question 1 & 2

The successful fundamentals of this image when I analyse it, it is how the poster is made by “halftones”.  

When you look really up close at the image, you will only see halftone dots, but from a distance you will see the image appear, the further away you look at it. The halftone dots are done successfully with a “rainbow” gradient. You are driven from the bottom of the image and towards the face, so the color use is done successfully. The image almost looks modern, since the halftone dots looks like giant pixels.

It is a successful use of the fundamentals of the Gestalt Theory, where the designer has used Proximity in his design. The halftone dots in the image is arranged closely together, this creates groups of association between the dots.  

I don’t think this image is a pastiche, since the image is not copying the style of the original poster. It is neither a parody of the original image, rather a celebration. I think this image is more an “Allusion”, this is when a designer refers to another one’s work.

The first he uses is “Empathy“, his first step in his project is identifying his target audience, and for this poster I think it is difficult to say, but the poster is an artistic/political poster with his touch of design. The second thing he uses is; “Distill its message“, this is about what you want to communicate. Maybe by making this image, he did it to renew interest in the history of Che Guevara. Third on his list is “Explore“, by that he says that “we often get trapped in our own common references that works”. Number 4 on his list is to “Create a relationship“, by this he says in the article that the “brain is looking for patterns constantly”. 5 on his list is to even “Explore some more“, and number 6 is “Be consistent“.   The last point on his list is “Add Value“, he says in the article “Add an element of surprise, it is the unexpected that makes something stand apart and that makes someone remember it”.

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Question 3

When I read about what Mondrian said about beauty, I see very clear similarities of the design of Tahier Variawa’s image and what have played a dominant role.  

Mondrian says “throughout the history of culture, art has demonstrated that universal beauty does not arise from the particular character of the form, but from the dynamic rhythm of its inherent relationships, or – in a composition – from the mutual relations of forms. Art has shown that it is a question of determining the relations.” 

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Question 4, 5 and 6

If I had to create this illustration, and without doing any execution, but by just looking at the original design I would have done this; 

When it comes to colour, I would split between three options, in one example, I think I would have used even more colours, to make the image look more realistic, with more natural tones. I

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Question 7

Composition; 
Maybe I would have liked to have more “air” in the picture, but actually I really like how the composition of this image is.  When you are “closer” to your image, in this design Che Guevara covers almost the whole image, you then feel that you get closer to the object in the image.