WEEK 4 - "Visual Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics: Adorableness in a picture"

I remember back when I was still a hyper, surging-with-hormones 14-year-old girl where zit was a matter of life-and-death and marrying one of the drop-dead gorgeous from a boyband was a life-mission, messaging through Friendster was a craze. We’d scribble snazzy messages on each other’s comment’s boxes. Leaving messages with any attached cute, bizarre, animated picture would give you bonus points and regarded as “socially active and creative” commenter, in the world of us gossiping-giggling-girls.

Looking back, I wonder what sparked our interest in choosing certain images and not the other.

This week we uncovered the knowledge of how and why our eyes seem to focus on a particular part of an image; and we also covered some basic grounds of the rules of visual syntax – how, by following the rules of visual colours, syntactic rules of lines and rules of composition may create a pleasing sight, and defying them may lead to the production of an uncomfortable sight.
This may be why a particular picture stands out from the rest: satisfying the rules qualifies them to stand out.

Now, a particular Friendster-comment image that has always been a favourite of mine over the years is the image of a very cute teddy bear by an empty, white flower pot.



Having the newly-found knowledge on eyes-fixation and visual syntax rules, I think it’s just about time to find out why this particular picture interests me so much than the rest. What are the rules that are obeyed (or disobeyed) that make this image seems like a comfy to me?

Eyes-movement & Eyes-fixation:
Now, when we’re looking at this image our eyes will move in the following direction:


In a split millisecond our eyes will land first onto the changing, blinking words and scribbled lines, before wandering around the teddy bear and finally settling down to the white almost-blending-in-with-the-background empty, white flower pot, and back to the blinking words and scribbled lines.

In terms of fixation, our eyes are fixed more on to the blinking words and lines, followed by the teddy bear, and finally the pot before going back to the changing, blinking words and lines.



Why is this so?

Symbols and explanatory words, lettering
Explanatory words, numbers or other symbols, according to Pettersson (1989, p. 259) is important as it facilitates comprehension and learning, and is therefore should be incorporated into the picture as reading aids. These aids, he adds, should not be distracting, large or ugly.

The words satisfy the rule of being not too large and simple - one word is presented at a time, however it defies the rule of being 'not distracting'.

The changing and blinking of the words and scribbled lines is in fact a distraction to the reader. The words and scribbled lines HAVE to be a distraction so that the reader's eyes are attracted to them on first-hand.
The words and scribbled lines are definitely the focus of the visual, but not the subject. This is when our eyes start to wander to the rest of the visual.

Size of subjects
According to Pettersson (1989), “the most important part of the subject must be large and clear, take up a large proportion of the image area and be perceivable as an entirety” (p. 248). He notes that large visual elements draw and appeal reader’s attention more than that of a smaller scale.

The teddy bear, being the subject in this image, appears big enough in the viewer’s eyes and therefore attracts viewer’s interest to it.

However, if we look carefully, the most dominating element in this picture is the whites – the white background and the white flower pot. So, why isn’t our eyes focus first on them instead?

This brings us to our next points of discussion.

Syntactic Rules of Colours:
According to the Third rule of colours as mention by Tufte (1990), “Large area background or base-colours should do their work most quietly, allowing the smaller, bright areas to stand out most vividly if the former are muted, grayish or neutral” (p. 90)

In application to this image: the smaller brown colour, as opposed to the large area of neutral white, is bright and strong colour. When the strong brown colour is put in the surrounding of whites, it appears tantalizing, and is therefore the one that stood out the most. In effect, like an oasis in a dessert, the teddy bear is the next thing that our eyes land on to after the blinking words and scribbled lines.

It has been found out that, as mentioned by Pettersson (1989), "even if colour is not adding any information it is still contributing to better learning because the interest for the picture increases" (p. 251)

Syntactic Rules of composition: Balancing the weight
Pettersson (1989, p. 256) again stresses the importance of balance in any visual because imbalance can spark unpleasant feeling in the reader. Balance, he notes, could be formal with total symmetry – that could create the feeling of static; or informal – that contributes to a feeling of dynamism.

In this image, the whites is more dominating in proportion to the brown, but due to the outstanding performance by the brown as explained previously, the teddy stand out as a foreground image, making the large-proportion of whites as background and balance is therefore achieved.

It is when our eyes start to wander back to the blinking, changing words and scribbled lines:

'YOU'
+
'ARE'
+
'MY'
+
'LOVE'

Together with the outstanding image of the teddy bear, our eyes complete the cycle of fixation and finally ignite the “aww” factor within the readers. Realize something at the last scribbled lines aligning with the word ‘LOVE’? It’s a childish scribble of a heart.

Maybe this is the main reason why I had always found this image as adorable:)

References:
Pettersson, R. (1989) Visuals for Information: Research and Practice. New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications

Tufte, E. R. (1990) Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press