LAYERS & TRANSPARENCY

Graphic Design is all about layers. We as designers its important to understand the visual and communicative impact that layers allow. Today the layering process is most commonly done digitally. The masking  and stacking of imagery and type that goes on in programs such as illustrator and photoshop reference the analog process of designers before the digital age. Having to work analog for this project has given me a great appreciation for the process. There is deffinitely an aesthetic quality to the cut imagery and hand arranged type. The combination of type and image informs and reinforms the viewer of the theme or subject matter. For example, in my book there are Dot arrangements that speak to the idea of a hurricane and there are type compositions that speak to the mannerisms of a hurricane. These viewed simultaneously by the viewer leave no room for confusion  while interestingly reinforcing the theme. As far as aesthetics go, when layered, the pages have moments of interaction between the type and image that make the compositions visually striking. Each layer alone should be interesting conceptually and visually so that when they are fused together there is a extra beautiful, extra interesting page. In visual communication we are focusing on our dot compositions to stand alone. In Type1 we are composing our pages without consideration or reliance on the other. This allows us to have two interesting compositions that don't need anything else to inform the viewer. Thus when they are combined it really gets across the point we are striving for. In saying all of this, there is a level of control we have been maintaining in the process so far. We have taken into account all variables and have manipulated type and image separately. So even though we have controlled the compositions throughout the whole process, once we combine the layers there will be serendipitous moments. These little beautiful moments add to the book in my mind. Exploiting the accidental and finding unexpected visual moments is an oddity that is essential and inevitable.