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Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art Analysis

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Today, images surround us, and they can have a bigger interaction between their viewers than may be assumed. In Scott McCloud’s book, “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art”, he relays the concept of simplification, and how to use it to bring more emphasis to the meaning of the drawing. In other words, McCloud is saying that through a process of breaking down a drawing to its rawest and most simplistic form, the piece itself becomes deeper in meaning. When looking at a finished image it should be apparent that the artist put thought into every detail, line, shape. When a final image looks simplistic, this is where the artist has succeeded in tricking the eye into believing the image is effortless when in fact it can in some cases be the exact …show more content…

It’s possible to understand cutting out pieces as an action of taking away what is unnecessary, but it’s interesting to shift the position of view and look at it as the artist’s ultimate decision on what is important enough to keep so that the image is easy to understand, and this is where the interpretation of the process fosters the artist’s decisions of what they want their audience to perceive. McCloud uses an example of transforming an image of himself and continuously simplifying it until it is just two dots and a line, resembling a face; this example works to show the process of choosing what features of the image are important to the meaning of the work. Another example of simplifying an image in order to convey a strong message is the Apple logo. The logo is simply an apple with a bit taken out of it. The image may be incredibly simplistic but it references the story of Adam and Eve as the logo portrays the forbidden fruit with a bite taken out of it. The roots of the logo also trace back to the short story of Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree, (Apple Inc. Wikipedia). The simplicity in the curves of the logo makes the image pleasant and aesthetically pleasing, and it withholds universal visual understanding because the image isn’t hard to decipher; unless one doesn’t know what an apple looked like. The apple logo can be seen in Figure 1, …show more content…

By making a simplistic image as a logo or icon the directed focus brings attention to the details that the artist saw as important and most relatable for the product being sold, company, or just image in general to the selected audience. McCloud uses an example of breaking down the image to make the image more applicable in his example of the simplification process, “by stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t”, (McCloud, 30). McCloud makes a point in the statement that realistic art in these terms isn’t as relatable to everyone because it is too specific, and this means that not everyone can easily relate. The point of an icon or logo is to make it easy to relate to, understand, or both in order to make the targeted audience remember the design and recognize it in the future. Going back to the example of Figure 1 the simple design is something that is easy to remember and relate to because of the familiarity that is referenced by the design. These two things are just a few of the key elements that make it a successful

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