Graphic Design: The New Basics

"Layers allow the designer to treat the image as a collection of assets, a database of possibilities" Reading this opened my eyes to why layers are so important during the work process. As designers we have to have the ability to relocate every part of a design. Elements such as type, line, images, and color blocks. Layering allows room to experiment and figure out if certain design elements are or are not working within a design. I feel that this is a very important part of design. A connection I found from this article is our discussion of layers in Color, Form, Production. We talked of how in printing, layering of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black is necessary to achieve the correct color. Although, layering is required in order to create a specific color, our eye does not see the layering. This leads to transparency. Transparency is similar to layers in the sense that it allows you to enhance layers, by creating a quality of density.

The layering in our books will absolutely play a role as to how we will perceive each word and every page of imagery. Layering with a transparency allows the eye to make inferences with both compositions or just one alone. Aesthetically this is a great thing because it automatically implies a certain depth to each word and each composition. Both the composition of dots and the transparency work together, but do not depend on one another. I tried very hard not to keep my type compositions when creating my dot compositions but it was difficult to.  

Having to create typography compositions by hand, has made me appreciate graphic design in past decades. Especially now that we have controls on our computers where we can highlight a certain area and easily copy it onto another space it's easier than ever. Back then, physically cutting and pasting was the only way to do it. No shortcuts. Layering is a technique that allows me to see what options I have and to try different things. Which as I have mentioned earlier in this post, is something very important in the process of design. This section actually reminds me of my darkroom teacher in high school, Miss Bennie Ansell, and her reaction to the transition of dark room terminology into Photoshop. She was lecturing and demonstrating how to dodge and burn in the darkroom, and a student immediately asked, "like in Photoshop?" Her reaction was priceless. She stopped what she was doing, closed her eyes and said very loudly, 'No! Dodging and burning originated in a dark room, not some digital program named Photoshop"