Applied and Commercial Art
Applied and commercial art is art made for a use - to inform, to sell, or to identify. The exam tests design vocabulary and simple problem-solving: how a poster is organised, what a logo must do, what a layout needs before it is printed.
Branches
Poster, advertisement, logo and symbol, package design, book jacket, illustration, lettering and typography, signboard and display, stage and exhibition design, textile and ceramic design.
Rules that earn marks
- Visual hierarchy - the eye must go headline, then image, then details, in that order.
- Optical centre - slightly above the geometric centre; the design sits better there.
- Contrast and legibility - dark on light or light on dark, never mid-tone on mid-tone.
- Unity - one idea, at most two typefaces, one dominant colour.
- Reproduction - a design must survive reduction, photocopying and the budgeted number of colours.
- Typography - baseline, x-height, cap height, ascender, descender, spacing.
Worked example
Design a poster for a school blood-donation camp using two colours only. Reasoning: fix the hierarchy first - a short headline, one strong image, then date, time and place. Two colours means one dark plus the paper, with tints of the dark; keep the image solid so it reads at ten metres. Use a single sans-serif face, the headline in capitals, details in small capitals. Then test it: shrink it to postcard size; if the date disappears, the hierarchy is wrong.
Traps
- Three or more typefaces.
- Text laid over a busy illustration.
- Ignoring the medium - a screen design may fail in one-colour print.
- A logo that needs a caption to be understood.