Grappling with Graphics

The three articles encompassing this week’s reading assignment provided some interesting fodder to chew upon as I approach the design of a visual accompaniment to my written work. I enjoyed Molly Bang’s highly visual and very colorful advice to design, as I appreciate all of her work (I’ve used some of her texts in my teaching), and I enjoyed both the photography and conceptions put forth by Shore. However it was the Dondis piece that I struggled with, not because of its length (albeit hefty), but because of its conflicting messages. Initially, the author seemed to suggest that all visual presentations require precise, analytical Gestalt-like thought,

Much of what we know about the interaction and effect of human perception on visual meaning is drawn from the research and experimentation in Gestalt psychology, but Gestalt thinking has more to offer than just the relationship between psychophysiological phenomena and visual expression. Its theoretical base is the belief that an approach to understanding and analyzing all systems requires recognizing that the system (or object or event, etcetera) as a whole is made up of interacting parts, which can be isolated and viewed as completely independent and then reassembled into the whole. No one unit of the system can be changed without modifying the whole. Any visual event or work is an incomparable example of this thesis since it was originally devised to exist as a well-balanced and inextricably involved totality. You can analyze any visual work from many points of view; one of the most revealing is to break it down into its constituent elements to better understand the whole. This process can provide deep insights into the nature of any visual medium as well as that of the individual work and the pre-visualization and making of a visual statement as well as the interpretation and response to it. (39 Dondis)

This formalized approach to visual art seemed to negate the visual instincts of creative artists, those of us who grab an oiled crayon and approach our

canvases with Berlioz innocence, scribbling until it “looks right.” According to the scoffing Dondis, scowling own his/her nose:

There is a Berlitz approach to visual communication. You don't have to decline verbs or spell words or learn syntax. You learn by doing. In the visual mode you pick up a pencil or crayon and you draw; you doodle out a rough plan for a new living room; you paint a sign announcing a public event. You can negotiate the visual means to make a message or a plan or an interpretation, but how does the effort fit in terms of visual literacy? The major difference between the direct, intuitive approach and visual literacy is the level of dependability and accuracy between the message encoded and the message received. In verbal communication what is spoken is heard only once. Knowing how to write affords a greater chance for control of effect and narrows the area of interpretation. So, also, with a visual message, but not quite. The complexity of the visual mode does not allow the narrow range of interpretation of language. But in-depth knowledge of the perceptual processes that govern response to visual stimuli increases the control of meaning. (37)

The entire text was instruction about how to avoid the mistakes of drawing without extensive pre-thinking, avoiding freewriting as a visual artist. Carefully deciding how to completely present a message prior to putting paint to canvas – or image to document – seemed dry and too analytical to me. It was all I could do not to grab my sketchbook and start doodling all over Dondis’ text. Fortunately there were so many pages I read it as an electronic document, so my pencil was left to fidget harmlessly in my hand. I approach my visual art with the same drafting process as my written art – I like it down on paper in a rough form and then it gets revised, and revised, and revised. But a good portion of it is what instinctively “feels right” to me visually with my “good eye.” My grammar and “poetic writing style” spring from the same well, and all are based on the deep flowing waters of my life experiences.

I did like Dondis’ analogies to written form – the focal point of a piece being analogous to a noun while minor details were the adjectives, the symmetries, lines and framings verbs to smaller adverbial details, and the formalization and terminologies of thinking were helpful reminders.

But in the end I thought Dondis contradicted his/her formal approach to visual creativity with a tribute to the artistic child within us:

Sight is the only necessity for visual understanding. One does not need to be literate to speak or understand language; one need not be visually literate to make or understand visual messages. These abilities are intrinsic in man and will emerge, to some extent, with or without teaching or models. As they develop in history, so they develop in the child. The visual input is of profound importance to understanding and survival. Yet the whole area of vision has been compartmentalized and de-emphasized as a primary means for communication. One explanation of this rather negative approach is that visual talent and competency were not considered available to all people, as verbal literacy was thought to be. If this were ever true, it certainly is no longer. (Dondis 67)

As is doubtlessly apparent, I tinker as an artist, running a bit of a graphic design business and also cartooning as one of my kazillion other side jobs, and thus I have some “feelings” about visual composition. Thus I read all three of this week’s pieces somewhat from the inside out. If I knew NOTHING about visual art, I might have found them more compelling, and I tried to imagine them from that perspective but failed. Sadly I carry a lot of emotional baggage about what is and what isn't good art (otherwise I would have gone to art school instead of becoming a chemistry major...but I digress). I know what kind of an artist I am – and I promise that my work will never have the peaceful “rightness” of symmetry or centering – it will be, not surprisingly, uncomfortably edgy, moving eyes and emotions in directions that hopefully compel thinking rather than complacent disinterest. Come to the fair! There will be eye candy there!