Expressive things
From previous articles
The expressiveness formula
Expressiveness — is when you perceive information quickly.
The more information there is in an object and the faster we perceive it, the more expressive it is. Therefore, the expressiveness formula:
Expressiveness = information ∕ time.
Make expressive — part 1, 2, 3, and 4
There are two methods to make an object more expressive:
1. Increase information — the numerator of the formula — in a way that creates a story.
2. Simplify. And by that, decrease time of perception — the denominator of the formula.
LET’S SEE how the two methods — increase information and simplify — can be used:
Sport center “Ferro”
The letters of the sport center’s name are made of white rectangles — bricks. They have the same length and height like bricks with which the building is made. This way the letters help show the beauty of the facade.
Expressiveness
Step 1 — increase information: Add the name on the empty glass.
Step 2 — simplify: Make it similar to the building’s facade, therefore the shape of the letters became more efficient.
Entrance to a house territory
The letters on the entrance door are made if the same material as the fence. This way the address doesn’t distract from observing beautiful trees on that territory — like if the address was written on a sign.
Expressiveness Step 1 — increase information: Add the address on the fence.
Step 2 — simplify: To not spoil the look of the fence, make the letters similar to it — made from metal.
Playground-octopus
The slides turned into tentacles.
Area for climbing — into the octopus’ body.
There are octopus suction cups on the slopes — they spin, you can play with them.
Expressiveness
This is the example of information increase. They took a simple playground and joined all it’s parts with a theme — octopus.
Let’s describe it with a paragraph. Reminder: if we can describe it with simple sentences and a fitting title, that means objects are connected with each other meaningfully.
Before:
Playground with a climbing section. It has 8 slides.
After:
Playground-octopus. This playground looks like an octopus. It has a climbing area — the octopus’ body. To this area 8 slides are attached — the tentacles.
A detail
In the first paragraph there were 8 homogenous parts — 8 slides. But in the second paragraph they turned into one object — octopus tentacles.
Eco-bike icon
The icon encourages us to care about nature, using bicycles.
Expressiveness
Step 1 — increase information: Added the idea of loving and caring about nature to the bike.
Step 2 — simplify: The bike became green, wheels turned into hearts, and the bicycle frame were cut out in two places to increase readability.
In detail
All three simplifications were done by overcoming the media limitations.
Reminder: those are the objects that define a media, like ink and background for an image. And there are three ways to deal with them: make less visible, more efficient, and move beyond the medium.
The simplifications:
1. Green bike. This way the bike’s frame became more efficient — now it helps convey the idea of caring about nature.
2. Heart-shaped wheels. The wheels became more efficient as well and do the same job.
3. Cut-out frame from the wheels. The frame became less visible. Otherwise the overlap with the hearts would make it harder to see that it’s a bicycle.
Bonne Maman and Hero jam jars
Usually jam jars are like the one on the right. They have a label with a logo, pictures of berries, and some description. While The left one looks like it was made by a grandmother from France.
Expressiveness The left jar is simplified. There is no picture of the berries, instead you can look at the jam through glass.
The logo and the description are made with the same font. And they look like they were hand written. As if a granny made that jam, put it into that jar, and wrote what it is for her dear grandchildren:
In detail
This jar deals with medium limitations two times:
- No berries pictures. The role of the pictures is taken by the jam itself. This method is called move beyond the medium.
- Granny’s font. The letters became more efficient. It could be just plain text, but now it conveys the feeling of something made by hand and with care.
And an extra detail
Even without dealing with medium limitations the left jar is expressive. There are no redundant elements.
The jar on the right has too many elements. There is a circle on the center, the bottom of the label is blue. The word diet’s style differs from the rest of the packaging. Like it was taken from somewhere else. All these elements don’t add information, and therefore make perception harder:
P.S. —
Thank you for reading!
This was the 6th article in the Expressiveness series. In these articles, I am looking for a single method to make design more beautiful and efficient.
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