How to have a Visual Logic Design Dialogue with an Image
”The animistic discourse of indigenous, oral peoples is and inevitable counterpart of their immediate, synaesthetic engagement with the land that they inhabit. The animistic proclivity to perceive the angular shape of a boulder (while shadows shift across its surface) as a kind of meaningful gesture, or to enter into felt conversations with clouds and owls—all of this could be brushed aside as imaginary distortion or hallucinatory fantasy if such active participation were not the very structure of perception, if the creative interplay of the senses in the things they encounter was not our sole way of linking ourselves to those things and letting the things weave themselves into our experience. Direct, prereflective perception is inherently synaesthetic, participatory, and animistic, disclosing the things and elements that surround us not as inert objects, but as expressive subjects, entities, powers, potencies.”
– David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
After writing a design brief, establishing a project’s parameters—including sender, audience, message and most importantly the project’s or message’s intent—then go wander visually and look for images.
The first step on this image quest, is to mind map a list of singular words that express the design project’s parameter’s, message and intent.
Then saunter aimlessly through magazines, books, the internet, your bedroom, etc., until you feel called by a particular image that catches your attention. Then draw it, select it, and or make a copy of it. Don’t just choose something with your strategic thinking mind; wait until you are called. And most particularly, do NOT choose a conceptual image or a design created by another designer, illustrator or photographer, particularly if it is a design solution to a similar problem.
Once selected, look at and observe the image closely for a good length of time. Interact with your senses, offering your full visual attention. Quickly sketch a thumbnail of it in your project sketchbook. Tell the image all about the design’s intent, and the particular reason you felt the image was called to you. Then stop and listen.
Listen with your ears, eyes, nose, skin, intuition, felling, and imagination (aural, visual kinesthetic, etc). Listen directly with prereflective perception. See if the image reflects something back to you about the design solution.
Do this with as many images as you can within the schedule and budget of the design project.
Then, organize the images into collections of at least three and not more than 9 images, utilizing the same prereflective approach you used to discover the images in the first place.
Block-in a simple visual composition of each collection that makes sense to you as a designer and seems to be related to and/or convey the design's intent.
Write a short prosaic concept statement expressing each composition.
This image can become the basis for your final design’s image, the structure you construct your design around, or a concept or idea for your final design solution.
Share those visual and verbal message concepts with other creatives,
asking for their perspective and critique, based upon the parameters of
the message and project.
Next, proceed to the design development phase of your project.
