Style to Sell

By , August 12, 2010 15:28

There are some tricks to have “style”

When your graphical production does not look harmonic || professional || complete, you have to work on your sketches and find the main style (like a corporate identity) that represents the project.

Colors & Light
The colors change, based on the ambient light where you watch them, that means  if you want to have a realistic effect on your illustrations you cannot use a warm gray and a cold gray in the same image, in nature that will not happen.
But you can use those gray variants  to create a surreal image for example.
Remember that the colors are influencing the mood, so use them with a meaning.
If you are working on web, search for the standard  colors for similar projects, because the meaning of the colors is really different in the different continents and the meaning changes a bit even between the European countries.

Background
The Background is really boring to make but really important to do.
Empty background is a ZEN solution, white for day, and Black for night. works only in ZEN context.
None color works as a single color in professional illustrations.
If you want to use one tone a good suggestion is to make a material background:
*  take many different white and trow them together on the paper
* take a brush technique and use one color, you will get a single color but with brushes signs, a bit of 3D

Minimize or exaggerate
When something does not convince you, here is the best trick to be used:
* minimize: take it out and delete it, minimize the objects  and the number of images helps to make the structure easier to read and be modeled.
* exaggerate: the other way is to take this not stylish component and repeat it, use it multiple times, even always.
For example you are not sure if a text needs to have a Outline color, you can take out the Outline at all minimize(), or make it fat, stronger color and repeat it for multiple text on the composition (exaggerate).

Harmonia and Elegance
Don’t be afraid, is easy. Everything around you can be represented by math, mathematics as convention to explain the world, Music is math based, and Art too. You can compose your images with math help, use the “guide lines”  to see clearly the position of your object on the page, to calculate the empty spaces … and remember Math,  Geometry, Perspective, Harmonia and Elegance are all the same thing !
z.B. Leonardo Da Vinci
The elegance is into clear lines, so if you use a Vector Program  smooth your lines or draw with a smoother plugin activated:
Inkscape  you can realize this in many ways; for example take the tool ->  [ EDIT PATH BY NODES ]  ; now click on -> [ Make selected nodes symmetric ]
Elegance has few lines, not many particulars, like an Armani suite 😛
Harmonia is based on the cycle of the objects, how and how many times the object is represented.
If there is an object on the left and on the right is empty, that means the emptyness has a meaning, when there is no meaning make full the right side with something that balance the left content.

In history of art the idea of composition is always present, every artist uses a personal way to do it, but many people use the 3,14 rule, go check how the greek temples were built, how Eisenstein decided the video Editing of “Panzerkreuzer Potemkin”, how  Bruno Munari plans his graphics design.

Probably I will be banned from many Graphics websites after this post, because those tricks and tips are the precious knowledge of who work and study ART || GFX

but you know what? lets support and produce Evolution: OPEN SOURCE, OPEN MIND, NOT COMMERCIAL, SHARE ALIKE

Alice Z Bognetti

One Response to “Style to Sell”

  1. This is a good subject to talk about. Sometimes I fav stuff like this on Redit. Although this time I’m not sure if this would be best for the users. I’ll look around and find another article that may work.

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