Design Principles / Task 2 - Visual Analysis & Ideation

17.02.2025 - 03.03.25 (Week 3-5)

Celine Christabelle Patricia / 0374872

Design Principles / Bachelors of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / The Design School

Task 2 - Visual Analysis & Ideation

Table Contents

Instructions

Lectures

Visual Analysis

Visual analysis is needed for critical judgement skills and helps people seek out answer instead of receiving information passively. These are the three main stages on how to do visual analysis:

Observation

What you observe in a glance of an eye without learning what the design is.
Identify the visuals, the elements

Analysis

Think about the observations you have made, make statements based on the evidence we have found,
Identify the design principles

Interpretation

What is the purpose of the design, why is this created

Task 2 - Visual Analysis & Ideation

Visual Analysis

Fig 1.0 - Mulan movie poster,
BLT Communication, 2020,
Size: (-) ,
Digital poster and Photography,
https://www.bltomato.com/project/mulan

Fig 1.0 Rationale

Observation
The poster is in portrait format. There is a woman with a serious with her hair swapped across her face who is looking into the viewer eyes. In terms of ambience, its red. There is a red lighting surrounding the subject. While visual elements, I can see there is the blue-toned sword covering some part of the subject's face, having the reflection of the character as the warrior. Additionally, the movie title and details below the picture is using a bright toned color.

Analysis
This movie poster demonstrates symmetrical balance that has an equal distribution of the character portraits. However, since they do not mirror each other, this composition follows the approximate symmetry. There is also balance between the subject and surrounding elements, such as the strong lighting effect. This strong red lighting also gives a strong emphasis on the character. Since this movie is based on Chinese culture, the word and image used are also similar to Chinese characters calligraphy, which resonates with the Chinese characters written on the sword. The title has a bigger font size compares to the additional informations. Although the title "MULAN" and the overall picture are red, they are both in different shades of red. This shows there is contrast. There is also hierarchy in the poster. Viewers will see from the eye of the character, then moving on to the portrait, then to the title, there is movement in the poster. Moreover, the additional information are in a different contrasting color to differentiate it from the title. Furthermore, the contrast of the main portrait and the reflection of the sword. Red, being a warm color, contrasts sharply with the cool blue tones in the sword’s reflection, making the composition becomes more dramatic.

Interpretation
The movie Mulan is adapted from a Disney's Animated Mulan. As a poster is used to market a movie, but the Mulan movie poster shows on how strong is the character. The story of Mulan started from her ill father is conscripted to fight the invading Huns. As a devoted daughter, Mulan disguised herself as a man and took his father's place. Through her courage and strategic thinking, she defeated the Hun army and saves the Emperor’s life. The movie teach us a lot of lessons, on how we express ourselves, defeat our own impostor syndrome, to know our power and be able to take risk, and many more. The poster is environmentally red, in color psychology, red has the strongest emotions among other colors. The color red is usually associated with fire and violence. The expression of seeing the color red is thought to be based on the physical characteristics associated with anger, like redness of the face which are caused by the rise of blood pressure. As the character Mulan is described as a strong and brave woman who dares to fight for her dad, it shows how brave is her to face obstacles, associated with anger to face her opponents during the war.

References

Fig 1.1 - References (sources)

From Fig 1.1, I used the keyword of "Knight", "Warrior", "Sorrow War" to know and learn about the emotions when making the poster. There is sadness, anger in a war, meaning there is a strong emotion to convey the message. I also learn some angles of the sword before sketching it.

Ideation

Fig 2.1 - Sketch 1

Explanation Fig 2.1

Rule of thirds is used for the composition of this sketch. As for this sketch, I want the sword to be the focal point, so it is put in the intersections of the grids. I added contrast by darkening the overall picture, including the woman, in order to emphasize the sword. Additionally, here is visual hierarchy in this sketch, where first viewers will look at the sword, then continue looking to the word on the right side.

Fig 2.2 - Sketch 2

Explanation Fig 2.2

There is symmetrical balance for this sketch. I added a little glow surrounding the woman to emphasize her as the main subject of the poster, also giving more contrast. I added black silhouette of a war happening in the background to create more harmony, so the overall poster would not be bland. Moreover, I added a bold phrase on top to describe the poster as the word.

Fig 2.3 - Sketch 3

Explanation Fig 2.3

For this sketch, it also has symmetrical balance like Fig 2.2 , but for this I want to emphasize on the subject's eye, to create tension when the viewer's see it. I added some scenes on the armor of the girl as a reflection so that viewers will understand more about the message conveyed. Furthermore, I added Chinese Characters as the word “战斗” which means "fight". For this image, there is also gestalt theory referring to the law of symmetry and order, where the subject is symmetrical to one another, creating balance.

Feedback

Week 4

Add hierarchy on the design principles. For the interpretation, add the background character of Mulan, explain the meaning of red. For the ideation, we must make a new design, not enhancing the existing design over and over, it would be counted as plagiarism.

Week 5

Sketch are professionally drawn, Sketch number 3 would be a great idea. For the next task develop more ideas from the sketches, it could be from colors or placements.

Celine Christabelle Patricia (0374872)

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