ABSTRACT
Most of the principles described in this book apply across different media, for instance to paintings as well as to photographs, and to images as well as to layouts that use visual design to combine text and image. However, the medium used also contributes meaning. A painting of a tree does not mean the same thing as a photograph of a tree or a tree drawn with a pencil. After an introduction to different technologies for producing visuals, the chapter argues that the meanings of different media are either based on the meaning potential of the material attributes of the relevant media, such as that they are coarse or smooth, soft or hard and so on, or on connotations that derive from well-established earlier uses of the relevant media (e.g. the sepia photograph as ‘historical’). The argument is illustrated with an extended analysis of the use of colour in a range of examples.
