Visual Aesthetics — Fall 2012

Visual aesthetics according to Katherine Nolan, August 31, 2012:

Aesthetics encompasses the philosophic idea of beauty.  It can be argued that beauty is perceived uniquely to each person. Although this may be true, there is a scientific explanation to understanding what is commonly visually pleasing to the eye. For example, any photographer is familiar with the rule of thirds, meaning that the main focus of the photo will look better framed according to the rule. The rule of thirds is so widely accepted that most modern cameras (including the iPhone) have the option of triggering a grid on the screen prior to the shot. The rule of thirds is just one of many common practices used in the field of design.

 

Professor Motley, I may have made the conscious decision to not raise my hand when asked who Googled the term “aesthetics,” but only to get a running start. So, I owe you a response that is completely derived from my vastly expanded knowledge on the subject.

Aesthetics – the visual elements of an object.

Not quite as eloquent as the philosophic idea of beauty, but I don’t like inserting the word beauty into the definition of aesthetics. I do agree with the definition but I think it can be easily misunderstood. Beauty, along with aesthetics, are constantly being redefined by society. The desired figure of a woman has shifted to all sides of the spectrum and hairstyles shift even faster.

The same concept applies to design. As August 31 Katie said, there are widely accepted “rules” to creating an aesthetically pleasing design and we have Gestalt to thank for his Principles of Design. A tremendous amount of weight lies on the aesthetics of an object and it’s relation to the whole, including similarities and differences. The human eye’s natural instinct is to look for patterns in order to fully understand the visual. The inclusion or omission of a defined pattern influences the translation of the visual.

For this reason, when artifacts are designed to be interactive, the visual aesthetics can ultimately help the user or make he/she work harder. For example, buttons on the internet are consistently designed to look like a button because there are distinct aesthetics of a button that are familiar to users i.e. the placement, color, style decoration, hover animation, container, etc. Designers may use the exact opposite aesthetic techniques to undermine the button. This decision is often used in games where a user is encouraged to explore the interface looking for clues that are only activated by rollovers. Very interesting. Two different aesthetics, two different objectives. Visual aesthetics is crucial to visual communication. Either the button screams for attention or it wants to be found – but that isn’t communicated via text; it is communicated through carefully planned aesthetic decisions.

We covered such a breadth of information in Visual Aesthetics that I don’t want to try and make a list of what I learned–I’d inevitably leave something off.

I don’t know why, but every time I start to write this post my mind keeps wandering back to a class I took my last semester as an undergraduate at UNC. Visual Culture was one of my favorite classes of my undergraduate career, and it was because it taught me to look at things for what they were, instead of judging the object itself first. We spent an entire week talking about the tradition of quilt making in the United States and I remember feeling rather indifferent about quilts before that week. We talked about quilts in their own context, and I came to appreciate quilts as an amazing visual artifact of culture.

I don’t know how that all connects to Visual Aesthetics, because that course wasn’t really about aesthetics, but I felt like talking about it, and I know this course makes me appreciate that course I took almost 4 years ago even more than I did at the time.

In the very first post, we wrote what we hoped to get out of this course. I wanted to be better at coming up with ideas and more confident in my creative abilities. I definitely feel more confident, and I’ve learned that being good at ideas just takes time and experience.

Well, like most courses in iMedia, Visual Aesthetics kicked my butt. I entered the program with a journalism and broadcasting degree and felt fairly comfortable with basic design concepts. While I understood that creating solid designs would require hard work, I don’t think I realized just how much.

Anyone can design a website. Or an application interface, or a magazine, or a PSA. But it takes an extensive amount of time and attention to detail to make something really work on its own – and more importantly – for a client.

When it comes to Visual Aesthetics, a designer can’t really afford to skimp on anything. Everything has to be done with a purpose. When I started iMedia in the fall, I understood that fact, but I just wasn’t sure why certain design choices worked more than others. My only reason, in my mind, for designing something, was “it just looks good that way.” That kinda of reasoning might work for an undergraduate class assignment, or even in an iMedia course, but no one coming out of this class will think it will work for a client.

Moving on from this course into my final semester at Elon, I’ll be carrying the principles taught in Visual Aesthetics along with me. I’ll be building a mobile website for my capstone project. Because of the nature of the users of the site I’ll be making, a clean legible interface and solid information architecture will be tremendously important. That makes all of the skills I picked up in Visual Aesthetics key to a successful capstone project.

While I’m not sad the course is over, I am certainly glad I went through it. It’s an empowering feeling to look at what my skills were just five months ago, and compare them to now. As I’m only a few months away from hitting the job market again, it’s great to have that confidence.

This semester I have had different angles of about visual communication.  It has given me a better understanding of the world of digital design.  I have been able to take away what others in the field have already been through.  I have gotten great pointers on surrounding myself with things that inspire me.  I have taken away visionary ideas that I can apply to my own work.  I have I have learned about careers in the world of design and communication.  Since this course I have not been able to look at graphics and typography the same again.  While driving down the road and I look at a billboard, I think about what font and what software they might have used to get the affect they got.  When I watch a film, I think about if they used After Effects to get the visual conclusion that I am seeing.  I have a better understanding on different career paths and what it takes to get there.  Some of the assignments that we had to read or watch correlated with our current project for the week, so it gave me a better understanding and appreciation for the assignment.  The course has given me a wide range of sources that I can always reference in the future.