Brandy Ellis UTC Graphic Design

MONTAGE TEXT

The text content was from an Internet classified ads agency. I found only one ad that could somewhat relate to my digital montage. The text honestly changes the entire meaning of my montage from being “rebirth” to “escape”. The as states: “Escape to the Caribbean for warm vacations. Nestled in the mountains five minute walk to river trails and mountain trails.” I emphasized the scale of the words escape, warm, and river to the largest fonts around the thirties and forties. The rest stayed at a font size between six and nine.   My middle ground sized words were vacation and Caribbean. They stayed at a font of twenty-one or so. I filled up the space dynamically with the words in sentence structure. Each sentence was placed in different ways. The text was placed angularly and intersected across the picture plane in many ways like a crossword puzzle. I tried to keep the composition away from the horizontal and vertical intersections.  The word escape is the largest word and is intensified by the moon. The rest of the larger text’s are on the left side under the moon similar to a cross word as well.  I made the words come out and say, “Escape to Warm River”, because it’s simple and creates a new meaning. The rest of the words in the ad were used for texture and for dynamic eye moving qualities.

MONTAGE

            The montage had a visual language? What ARE the images trying to say? When you put two images of three together they can create a whole new language or meaning, Right? Well, It’s difficult to create something first then try and find visual language or meaning later. The only way I could do this was to use symbolism.  At first glance my montage says creatures of the night near a mountainous terrain and river. It may even say evil or sinful because of the interpretation of such creatures. I know some viewers find their own relation, may be biased, or cringe at the thought of bats and snakes.  Ok, Now that you have viewed my montage and formed your own visual interpretation. I will give you one more second to think about symbolism before I will tell you what this montage’s meaning is to me. I will give examples to make matters clear. First, I would like to explain the relationship of the moon to the snake. Symbolically these two images relate on a subject far deeper than visual characteristics. For example: The snake will shed its skin every so often thus symbolically meaning “to renew” or to be “reborn”, if you will. The moon is directly related in a way that is equivalent to being reborn. Like the snake’s renewal, the moon falls into shadow and is reborn into light once a month. This relationship is the top visual meaning of my montage.  On another note, the snake relating to the bats are not as important. They do, however, relate similarity in a characteristic type of way. The creatures I chose both cannot see very well. One uses radar and the other used receptors on its tongue.  These creatures are also opposites because the snake’s terrain is the ground, while; the bat’s terrain is the sky. This relationship is important somewhat if you can find meaning in it. The mountains do not have any direct relation to the creatures or the visual language itself. Nor does the sliver of water in the left corner have any significance to the language. I simple used these two elements for background enhancement and to put the snake on the ground in his terrain.  So, basically my main point or language is relative to being “reborn” or “renewed”. It may seem as though there is a narrative due to the example I added to make sense of the Images. 

LINE ART TEXT COMPOSITION

The text composition is a tricky thing to do when using classified ads. I chose an ad that would relate to my juxtaposition image pair of a woman silhouette and a flower. The ad stated: Competitive by Nature? We are looking for team-oriented individuals to lead a sales and marketing team. How dews this relate? Well, the only few words that were emphasized were competitive by nature, individuals, lead and team. I scaled all of the insignificant words around the seven-font size and the words that related to around the twenty or thirty font size. The words individuals, lead, and team were median fonts. The variations in the size were supposed to hypothetically bring a fore ground, middle ground and background quality to the composition. The way the words were placed makes an image itself. I used type on a path to create an image with the text. This image made the variation of the scale of the words flat. The image I made was a moderately complex six-pedaled flower with a boarder that was organic. The boarder directly related to the curvature of the petals. The words that I put in the center of the flower were Competitive by Nature? 

IMAGE JUXTAPOSITION

The first image that I chose was the silhouette of a girl with flowing organic hair. This image was used in order to help make the composition a little livelier. The second image I chose to juxtaposition the silhouette was a flower that could counter balance the dense silhouette. The flower achieves this by being mostly white and brings a variety of line quality to the composition. Although the silhouette is quite dense, the hair is quite opposite with it’s thin strand line structure. The flower’s line structure is one with thick boarder lines, while the flower itself remains mostly white. The flower also has some organic “curls”, like the hair, that make the two images pair easily. The images together make a composition that is organic in a noticeable way. This may not be true to all viewers, however the two together create a dynamic composition for the most part. This silhouette catches your eye with its dense color. Then you are drawn up to the organic hair that flows and curls from the head down to the flower on the left. After that the flower’s line structure almost flows back into the silhouette from the left back to the right.