Design Success and Failure in Relation to Syntactical Guidelines

For this exercise, I found two graphics of waterpark maps.
The first image is a waterpark map of Wichita Falls in Texas. I believe this map shows good syntactical design. It shows a lot of balance, and everything is held together by the border and the "grassy" area. It's very simple and easy to understand, and likely to get the point across.



For my second image, I used a graphic for the map of Splashtown. Although the map itself is somewhat syntactical, it's not a very interesting design to look at. There is a grid set up around it, but it could be very hard to find exactly which part of the grid you are trying to find on the map. The text on the left side put in boxes kind of throws everything off. Also the text in the orange bubble also kind of throws the whole image off.

Overall, the first image has more balance and just seems to be held together better than the second image of the entire brochure.

Visual Language Syntax

This image is a good example to show the struggles of unemployment.
-Cheap Sign
-"Not Hiring"
-Incomplete sentences
-No symbols/lack of symbols
This image is a hand written poster attached to a gate that says "you don't work here. Keep out. Not hiring." It's a white poster with sloppy black hand writing. The poster it zip tied to the fence. This shows the struggles of unemployment because this place can't afford to hire anybody. They also can't even afford a nice sign to say that they are unable to hire people.

Meaning 2: Interactions between the three levels

The area of design I am interested is infographics, especially maps. I feel this image of a map of the US shows good examples of representational, abstract, and symbolic levels of visual design.

First is representational. This is obviously representational of a map/top view of the United States. The shape of the United States is very well known, and by the outline of the image, it is obvious that this is a representation of the US.

Next is abstract. Although it may not be the most abstract image, I still believe this image is somewhat abstract because of the different colors of the states, and some of the tinier images on the page, the somewhat "symbols", are kind of abstract with their shapes. Mostly these would be the ones that look like trees.

Last, this image has a lot of symbols on it. One very good example would be the symbol of a video camera located on the image in Southern California. This symbol would represent that this is where Hollywood is, and this is where many movies are made.

Blog Exercise #1

The category I chose to write about in my blog would be a representation, abstraction, and symbol, all that pertain to a restaurant or dining space. Here are my images, in order: representation, abstraction, and symbol.







The first image is a representation of a restaurant, because it shows the front of what most restaurants look like. Front windows, with tables in the windows for people to sit at, along with the nice big sign outside above the door saying "Restaurant" showing what the building is. You can tell it's pretty bright inside, and has a lot of people eating and enjoying their time at the restaurant.

The second image is an abstraction of the inside of a restaurant. It's hard to make out, but it's an image of the dining room, tables with food and set for a meal, and is obviously the inside of a restaurant. The image has been blurred and altered to make the image abstract and so it doesn't exactly look like a "restaurant".

The 3rd and last image is the symbol for a restaurant. This is a very well known symbol in the US. Even though it doesn't show any food in the image, most people can tell that those are symbols for a fork and a knife, meaning that this is a place where people can eat. Although a "place to eat" doesn't necessarily mean that food will be provided, chances are this symbol denotes that there will be opportunity to purchase food at this spot. A symbol that might be seen as a "place to eat" where food may not be available, might be a symbol for a picnic table or picnic area.