Layers, Transparency, and Hierarchy

One of the most powerful design principles that we have read about so far is layers. Photoshop uses layers, and they can be very effective design choices. It is easy to add or remove them, and the addition or removal of even a single layer can change a creative work immensely.

Something about layers that caught my attention in the reading was the following passage, found on page 142 of Graphic Design: The New Basics:


"In everyday life as well as in films and animations, multiple stories can unfold simultaneously. A person can talk on the phone while folding the laundry and hearing a song in the background. In films, characters often carry on a conversation while performing an action."

Layers, then, are a natural part of life, so no wonder they cross over into our creative measures. Transparency, another design principle, plays well with the principle of layering. With transparency, layers can overlap without full opacity, therefore adding hierarchical meaning to the images and text as well as creating a less "blocky" layer. By a "blocky" layer, I mean similar to a magazine collage, which has transparency that cannot be altered by means of computer software.

As the book states on page 147:

"Transparency and layers are related phenomena...a viewer thus perceives the transparency of one plane in relation to a second one. What is in front, and what is behind? What dominates, and what recedes?"

Again, this brings in another design principle--hierarchy. The pieces that are readily seen, larger, brighter, and more opaque generally catch the viewer's attention first, and are therefore interpellated as being more important in the image.