Week 5 Blog Exercise: Design Success and Failure in Relation to Syntactical Guidelines

Syntactical Guidelines Put to Good Use:

Syntactical Guidelines that are included in the image above are Perception, Leveling & Sharpening, and Positive/Negative.
Perception: Right off the bat, readers can quickly recognize this image for an advertisement for an event. The 3 people incorporated in the image are dancing and dancing usually includes music. Not only that but the word "Music" appears twice in the image which allows readers to connect the words to the actions behind the words.
Leveling & Sharpening: This image is leveled because the focus is in the center of the image; both right and left of the image an equal amount of space as well as the top and the bottom of the image. However, the directions in which the people are facing are not leveled since they are each facing a different direction.
Positive & Negative: This image includes positive and negative space; the people in the center are the positive space and the dark background are the negative space. There is more positive space than negative space to prevent ambiguity so viewers know what to focus on.


Syntactical Guidelines Put to Bad Use:








(unable to fix the huge gap between title and 2nd image) Unlike the image presented before, this image does not fulfill the Syntactical Guidelines listed above.
Perception: Viewers cannot immediately identify what this image is. The focus is completely off due to there being too many elements present. My eyes rather than looking at the person first, actually looked at the water an the purple shapes on the bottom. The person in the image does not stand out as much as the other elements that surround it.
Leveling & Sharpening: This image is a very sharp image because the direction of this image is traveling everywhere. Viewers cannot identify what the focus is and their eyes will constantly travel.
Positive & Negative: Unlike the image before, this image seems to show an equal amount of positive and negative space. This causing an ambiguity once again because viewers do not know where to look first. Even the black of the person's shirt is blending into the background.