Using Artwork in Design. Oracom example
| Oracom example |
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| Fig. 2: Artwork used in a promotional brochure for Oracom, Inc. |
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After the image has performed its symbolic function on the brochure's
opening page,
the rest of the composition makes extensive use of its decorative value.
Now, recognizability of the objects in the image does not matter any
more, and the compact, streamlined spherical outline of the
entire drawing would be an obstacle in combining it with other elements.
Hence the decision to cut the original image into strip-shaped parts,
with each one being large enough to guess its place in the original, but
at the same time open-ended and loose to fit the overall scattered style
of the internal pages.
On the last page, even the partial recognizability was sacrificed for the sake of the pure texture's impact. Contrasting with the regular lines of crisp letters, the fuzzy cloud borrowed from the bottom of the original image's computer (see Fig. 2) was enlarged and additionally blurred at the edges to make its texture even more expressive. So, the entire brochure uses one piece of artwork throughout, although in different roles and in differently formatted fragments. This technique is perhaps the most popular in modern design, since reusing graphics over and over has many advantages (besides the obvious consideration that hiring a professional artist to make a lot of different images could be quite expensive). First, this enhances a sense of integrity in the composition; second, it provides a pleasant intellectual incentive to try to identify different parts as belonging to the same source. Finally, remember the relation of serialization to generalization discussed above: creative variations of a single image help to explore its decorative value and diminish symbolism which is irrlevant everywhere except the front page of the brochure. |
Revised: Dec. 11, 1998
URL: http://www.webreference.com/dlab/9812/oracom.html


