Week 3.2 Commentary (Rachel Chae)

I found it interesting how Dondis described visual design as an immediate, spontaneous medium. He makes the case that visual images are interpreted “without conscious decoding, translating, or delay,” but I’m not sure I agree. It made me think of those “Where’s Waldo?” drawings where viewers take time to digest each detail and hidden messages in the painting, as well as examples like the picture below where messages are delivered in a sequential manner, even if all the components are presented at once.

Symmetry and Asymmetry Out of all the principles that Dondis described, I think these were the easiest to grasp for me. I liked how Dondis described symmetry as an “axial balance,” and his examples demonstrated this effectively. The asymmetrical examples appear off-balance and tilted to the side, while symmetrical examples appear balanced and static.

Repetition and Episodicity I found this principle interesting because I don’t think I would have considered repetition and episodicity as opposing principles, I would have considered episodicity as a variation of repetition. However, looking at the examples I see why he categorized them this way: repetitive examples felt uniform and steady while episodic examples felt irregular and unbalanced. This principle made me think of those Andy Warhol paintings of Campbell soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, which would fall under repetition.