Above it all 2.0 Can you relate?

                         photo courtesy Belle Marko

How about photos, then? Do photos work for maps? For communication of design ideas, sharing a photo does not guarantee mutual understanding of the subject depicted. Depending on the desired outcome, one may have to add –or subtract– elements to make a story clearer to an intended audience. This photo elicits my awe and admiration for the engineering of the Golden Gate Bridge. It may not engage the Egyptian brick-maker from the last post. He may have never seen a sea from on high, nor would he know that each of those light blobs can carry a family of six. What would he make of this image? If one could reach across a 3500-year culture gap, what addition to this image would tell the brick-maker what's going on in this photo? 

We think of photos as carrying real information, because a camera reports everything in its field of view. Sometimes that's no help. The same view in fog, at dawn, or at high noon looks very different. A photo is merely a flat extraction of 3D data, whether taken from a satellite, a roaming van, or the end of a laparoscope. It's an abstract field of texture and color, unless it indicates scale or depicts a familiar item that gives the viewer a sense of his or her size in relation to the scene. 

I'm glad my GPS doesn't send me "real" aerial photos for navigation! It reduces visual data to fewer colors, some arrows and scale indicators, and I can quickly choose a path.  

Who’ll be the next in line?

The #1 quick-fix to indicate “I’m in front!” is overlap. Other depth cues on a flat surface include: diminution (getting smaller-ness), convergence and upward position on field. These 2D figures at San Francisco's Transbay Temporary Terminal keep a polite distance and staying within the boundary. For their work-weary audience, they model all the depth cues but overlap, in the hope that the audience for this sign will behave, in real space, accordingly. The figures don’t overlap each other; that might imply touching! How telling for our culture! The only overlap in this pic is that of shoulders covering the farther line boundary.

Framing techniques

 I'm outta here!

This scratchboard made for Marley Lynch's 3rd birthday is my first Sendak-inspired image that came to mind after hearing today's sad news. Goodbye to Maurice Sendak, who passed yesterday morning at 83. His phrases run through my mind every week: "Milk! Milk! Milk for the morning cake!"

In a clutch of radio interviews compiled by WHYY's Fresh Air to commemorate his passing, Sendak recalls being a sickly child in the years before vaccines and antibiotics. He spent much time in bed. To pass time during visits, his grandmother would close, then open the window shade for him, to great theatric effect. Mundane scenes of Brooklyn were enhanced by that prelude of anticipation. "The window became my movie camera, my television set." Can you imagine a better way to imprint a framing technique for illustration on a young fellow?

When Sendak chooses to employ depth cues, his volumetric worlds are rendered to the flat page so believably, giving great depth to landscape as in his "decorations" for Randall Jarrell's The Animal Family. Other views, like the party scene in Where the Wild Things Are, compress depth to a claustrophobic sliver. A master of narrative, whether a band header or full-page embellishments in dense pen and ink, Sendak enchants readers to lose themselves in each frame.  Children do this very easily, but Sendak's spell works on grownups, too. I suspect all the childhood window-watching gave him a lifelong ability to climb into the frame and report back to us.