Shape: Several different shapes are active on this book cover. The blue circles are shapes used to do two jobs here. One of them is to group together to spell out the letter L for logos, the title of the book. This draws attention because the circles are blue against the dark gray background. The second job for the blue circles is that they are put together to lead the user from the top left of the book cover, the area where readers pay attention to first, to the bottom right where the book will open for the reader. Another shape used is the rectangle. There is a black one on the right highlighting the publisher of the book. The contrast between the gray and black makes this shape work.
Line: The line element is used in this book cover. The lines are the thick white lines surrounding the black squares to form a grid structure on the cover except for the section where it is broken apart by the four diagonal squares with text in them. Here, the line is used to form structure for the different elements that are needed on the cover such as the text. The lines are perfectly straight horizontally and vertically to show that the grid is a significant part of typography for clear reading. The lines also help draw the viewer across the page because a line is never static.
Direction: In this book cover spread, direction is a strong element. The illustration of both yellow and green birds, which look somewhat like a triangle shape, are put into a pattern where if you look at the front cover on the right side of the spread, the view will follow the flying birds to the right side of the book. This leads the reader to want to open the book. If the viewer is looking at the back of the book, the contrast between the green and yellow birds there will cause the user to look at the flying direction of the green birds to the left side of the book. This gives the same effect of the front side except it is reversed. As the birds are triangular shaped, therefore having diagonals, it makes the direction visually provoking.
Color: On this table of contents spread from a book, the color element is being used several times. Each chapter of the book is given a distinct color. The color is used as a background color for the white title of the chapter under each rectangular image. By making each one a different hue, color is assigned to each chapter, allowing the reader to more easily browse through the book and find the information they are looking for within it. Since color is also the strongest visual process, it draws the attention of the viewer easily.
This magazine advertisement is an example of representational visual information because it contains a photograph of a real car, road, and sky that people would experience in the real world. The image on the ad is a photograph, which people depend on to represent visual reality. The sky looks realistic and is something everyone, including the viewer, recognizes from experience in life. Both the road and car are something man made and not in everyone's environment, but the designer assumes that whoever has a magazine probably has experienced a concrete road and several cars in the real world if they have access to a magazine which advertises it. This photograph is able to replicate an actual car, road, and sky on the flat surface of a magazine. All the details it would have in the real world are present in the photograph so the viewer can believe that it is real and may intice them to desire a car which looks like the one in the ad.
The imagery in this CD album cover is an example of abstraction because the image does not represent anything that the viewer would experience in the real world. It has no connection with anything we can experience in the physical environment. This cover uses the space purely for tone, color, and texture. Only the composition itself in the design has meaning that is subjective to the perception of each viewer. In my interpretation of this abstract design, the image is related to the title of the album "Waking Up." The features in the image seem to be going up, or waking up, from the ground and going higher. Most of the round features have a trail to make it seem like they are moving upwards. Ultimately, even if the viewer is not sure what the exact meaning is, they can extract from just looking that there is a movement of going up.
This poster is an example of symbolic visual information because it is very simple. The poster is basically reduced to minimal information so that the viewer can still be able to recognize what they are viewing without the details. In addition, the letters and words on the poster are also symbols of written language. Most of the symbols in this poster such as the iPod and the words must be learned to understand, but the silhouette is obviously a human female to any viewer. The silhouette has an arm that is out and a tilted head, which means that she is probably in motion. Someone familiar with the iPod would probably understand that she is dancing to whatever music she is listening to from it. This means that whoever owns an iPod like the woman in the poster can have fun dancing like she is by connecting each of the symbols on ad.
