Introduction to Theory as Practice

We began looking into the meaning of theory and how it will help influence and improve our work. Using a mixture of history, theory and practice I can improve my work as a designer.

Visual communication is key, it as the power to inform, persuade and educate. by using the images, symbols and icons. We are able to recognise the meaning of a symbol a lot quicker than reading a long paragraph. Evidence of this can be seen in every day life; traffic lights have three colours and you know what these colours mean when in a certain sequence, it signifies what we need to do. Red - Stop . Green - Go . Amber - Proceed with caution.

We have to make sure that we look into the meaning and history of subjects before designing responses to briefs. This is important because when forming ideas they can be better developed by the history of the subject.

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Kandinsky's Experiment - Circle, Square, Triangle

Wassily Kandinsky, a student from Bauhaus, circulated a questionnaire trying to determine the universal response for the relationship between colour and form. The questionnaire consisted of three shapes, a triangle, square and circle, he recipient was then to colour each one with a different primary colour etc. Red, blue or yellow. His questionnaire received a remarkable about of the same response. This may because those in the school had the same theoretical ideals. They believed that the triangle was yellow, square to be red, and the circle to be blue. This product influenced many projects in the early days of Bauhaus. They were also to give an explanation where possible. I decided to do this myself deciding differently to the Kandinsky original consensus. I felt as if the triangle should be red as this is what most red warning sign are shaped and coloured like. The circle is to be yellow as it re...

The Bechers & Idris Khan

During the Lecture two lots of work caught my eye, the first from The Bechers and the second from Idris Khan. Brent and Hilla Becher made photographic typologies as an archive of uniform photograph. The grid structure helps give symmetry, Each object is large and as important as any other. Consistency is key in the photographs of the gas containers, the light, scale and viewpoint all correspond. Their work was often placed in a grid of neutral white frames. Idris Khan was born in England, 1978, he completed his master in 2004 at the Royal College of Art in London. He works in sculpture, painting and photography. His ideas are based on a repeating process of creation and deletion, or even adding of new layers while retaining traces of what has gone before. He is well known for his large-scale works in which techniques of layering are used to arrive at what might be considered the essence of an image, and to create something entirely new through repe...

Visual Communication

We started the lecture looking into the definition of Visual Communication. Two dimensional images such as advertising, industrial design, typography, graphic design, drawings, illustration, animation and sign are examples of visual communication. It is a way to convey ideas and information which can be digested in a visual form by being viewed or read. The most successful visual communication can be understood, with or without complementary typeface. What is theory and why study it? The google definition of theory is ‘ a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.’ The reason we study theory is due to it providing us an explanatory framework which can be used to explore or support ideas, develop hypotheses, or as a basis/critique. A quote was highlighted by Paul Rand which reads: ‘Intuition is a flash of light conditioned by experience, culture and imagination...

Jade Navan Caitlin

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