Drawn

Illustrator and cartoonist D.B. Dowd has a wonderful blog called Graphic Tales that delves into the philosophy and theory of illustration, cartooning, design, and how the three intersect. A recent post entitled Spatial Displays for Information explores the relation between illustrated objects and their position on the printed page. He touches on theories that we’re all taught early on — namely that objects lower on the page are closer to the reader than those that are higher on the page. Combine this with overlapping and colour contrast, and we get the most basic methods for creating the illusion of depth. Where it gets interesting to me as a cartoonist and a lover of typography is when these pictorial spaces become exaggerated, and more graphic and informational in nature.

In pictures like this one, image units operate like visual integers or language characters. They relate to one another in the structure of the diagram, but they retain their integrity as individual units. And of course that’s where pictures started, back in the mists of proto-language.

Check out Graphic Tales. Plenty of interesting reads. (Thanks Bob!)