My fiancee and I were driving back to our apartment tonight, when she noted a large format print banner hanging from the side of a multi-tiered parking lot. Being somewhat unfamiliar with the neighborhood (we’re still displaced from our burned-out house), I saw what I expected to see: a graphic image with a type treatment hanging above a section of the parking lot wall composed of bricks.
“Since when do bricks have creases and folds?” my fiancee noted. I looked again and realized I had been fooled. The parking lot wall was completely white concrete, and the bricks had been included on the large format print signage. Wow.
The French have a term for this: “trompe l’oeil,” which according to Wikipedia means “deceive the eye.” Wikipedia goes on to describe trompe l’oeil as “an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions.”
Now this is a term I had heard a lot in my prior studies of the fine arts, both drawing and painting. Until today I had not really seen this artistic technique used within the commercial arts field. So I was particularly pleased.
Trompe l’oeil most often (at least in the paintings I have seen) refers to a still life of either flat objects against a flat background or three dimensional objects against a flat background.
If you check out Wikipedia, you’ll see a painting by William Harnett called Still Life Violin and Music and another painting by Evert Collier, simply noted as Trompe l’oeil painting.
The former includes such items as a violin, sheet music, and a horse shoe hanging up against a wood door with metal hinges (the key is the flat background, which acts as a bulletin board of sorts).
The latter painting includes various printed scraps of paper and a quill attached to a wall with leather straps. Again, the wall is integral to the design, as it is in the first painting. In both cases, the fact that the background is flat, facing or parallel to the viewer, and immediately behind the other elements of the still life all contribute to the illusion of perspective that makes these paintings intriguing to the viewer.
How Does this Relate to the Large Format Wall Banner of Bricks?
Once I had realized that the bricks in the large format print signage had been inkjetted onto the vinyl substrate, and that they were not a part of the parking lot, I was intrigued. How, I asked myself, could these appear to be so real?
First of all, like the trompe l’oeil paintings shown in Wikipedia, the background of bricks was flat, parallel to the viewer, and immediately behind the other elements of the design on the signage. One thing I would add is that the image of the bricks was patterned and regular, like the door in the Harnett painting Still Life Violin and Music and the board with leather straps holding pieces of paper and a quill pen in Collier’s painting.
In both of these paintings and in the brick images on the large vinyl mural, the regularity of the background pattern, across the viewer’s immediate field of vision (as opposed to being set into the background of the painting), tricks the viewer’s eye and makes this element of the painting seem real: whether it be a door, a board, or bricks. The manipulation of perspective in each case deceives the viewer.
What You Can Learn for Your Own Graphic Design Work
Good graphic design draws upon many elements of the fine arts, not the least of which are subject matter and perspective. The main difference between the large format print signage on the side of the parking lot and the two paintings in Wikipedia is that the former is selling something: in this case it was selling homes in the new development for which the parking lot had been built. Commercial art is still art.
So as you prepare your graphic design pieces for commercial printing, be mindful of the fine arts. You may find inspiration in their techniques or subject matter.
Another thing to consider is that good commercial art grabs the viewer’s attention, and playing with perspective (such as photographing the subject of an advertisement with an intriguing perspective or from an unusual vantage point) will catch the viewer’s interest.
Moreover, many people find humor in trompe l’oeil. This is because they think it is one thing at first glance, but then it turns out to be something entirely different. (In just this way, what I thought were actual bricks in a wall caught my attention once I saw the folds in the banner and realized they were only images of bricks inkjet printed onto signage.)
In short, humor and the unexpected can make your graphic design work stand out. If you can intrigue the viewer, you will get him/her on your side, and he will be more open to the message your large format print signage conveys.
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 15th, 2014 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Large-Format Printing.
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