Lesson 3: Visuals and Emotion

Visual Principles and Emotions

Molly Bang asked herself the same question. She wanted to create pictures that display different emotions. She played with different shapes and colors of construction paper and eventually she started to understand how certain elements in pictures affect our emotions. Over time she developed a set of visual principles.

Molly Bang explains how she came up with these principles by trying to illustrate the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She wondered how she could make certain elements look more or less scary. Please read more about the principles she came up with below.



If you are interested in reading about these principles in more detail, please read her book:

  • Bang, M. (2000). Picture this: How pictures work. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

Assignment 3: Visuals and Emotions

Description

Part 1

  • Choose an image or photograph that you have encountered in your daily or professional life that conveyed a specific emotion to you. This can be an image from a children’s book, a picture you have taken, or an image you have seen on the internet.
  • Paste this image into a Word file.
  • In 1-2 pages (double spaced), analyze this image based on Molly Bang’s 10 visual principles. Which emotion does this image convey to you, and how could Molly Bang’s 10 visual principles explain how this image made you feel that way?

Part 2

  • Think of an emotion that you would like to represent visually. This can relate to anything in your personal or professional life (e.g. a scary animal, a peaceful field of flowers, or an image in a safety manual representing a sense of danger).
  • Using very simple geometric shapes, like Molly Bang did in her work that you have looked at in this lesson, create a visualization of this emotion. You can either use construction paper (and take a picture of it), or you can use a program such as Paint, PowerPoint, or Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator to create your visual.
  • Paste your finished visual in a Word file.
  • In 1-2 pages (double spaced), explain how Molly Bang’s visual principles align with the visual you have created).

Submit Your Assignment

At the end of this lesson you will submit your completed assignment. To recap, Assignment 3 should be prepared using Microsoft Word. At the top of your document you should have the lesson name, and underneath that should be your name, email address, and the date. When you save the document as a file on your computer, make sure the file is named “Assignment3”. After you have saved your file, go to the student interface and submit your assignment for grading. Click here if you need additional information regarding submission of your assignment.

Grading Criteria

Part 1

  • Included the image in the Word file. (1)
  • Carefully analyzed the image and explained to how Molly Bang’s 10 visual principles align with the emotion the image conveyed to you.  (9)

Part 2

  • Included the self-made visual in the Word file. (1)
  • Applied Molly Bang’s visual principles in the creation of the image. (4)
  • Carefully analyzed and explained how Molly Bang’s 10 visual principles align with the image and intended emotion. (5)

Points: 20