Jooyeon Oh

Visual narrative study using a form of book

Using five chapters, experiment begins with taking a reader through visual narrative starting from
entirely written stories to only leaving with visual. 

Initial brainstorming for my degree project began from what made me to choose graphic design as my major. When I started art in high school, I realized I was more drawn into 2-dimensional design than 3-dimensional work. Looking back into my childhood, I was always more drawn into lego blocks than barbie dolls, and geometry than calculus. All those years of making grids and playing with dots, and then linear lines , then shapes led me into thinking when visual comes to communicating, how will comprehension level change depends on what visual elements are used. 

Using three types of commonly-used visual elements: type, image, shape, the experiment begins the book with written words and ends with only visuals. Divided into five chapters, as images substitute writings and shapes substitute writings and images, the directness of message from the book decreases. As contents are substituted to images and shapes, the reader’s perception of the book becomes broader. Understanding of the shapes can come from either contents from the writing or from one’s thoughts and memories. Depends on whomever the reader is, the ending of the book can be quite various.

Taking though the narrative giving readers some thoughts on what makes narrative visually appealing and give readers options for taking parts in the story.