How do graphic designers point out what it is they wish to highlight? Emphasis can be achieved through a number of strategies. In the case the album cover featured, (Wire’s Pink Flag, 1977), we see a couple of indicators that lead up to it’s ultimate emphasis on the flag. Emphasis here is achieved by imbalance and the contrasting of value and color. While it has a horizontal balance to it (other than the text), the design’s vertical orientation is focused abnormally upward, as the sky takes up most of the picture plane. This vertical imbalance leads the viewer to focus more on the top half of the image – a visual suggestion seemingly accented further by the vertically escalating flagpole (horizontally centered). As our eye moves upward up the pole we reach the zenith of emphasis, the pink flag, darker in value than the blue ground behind it, and a color seen nowhere else in the design. It faces right possibly to counter the text in the left corner. If it were not for this isolated small patch of pink, the emphasis would be the big dark plane at the bottom of the page. This design’s emphasis is focused anywhere but the center, a preference rarely so blatantly discernible as it is in this album cover.
(public domain image taken from http://www.wikipedia.org)
(Wire's website - http://www.pinkflag.com)
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