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Glaze, George L.
(1995).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000fb76
Abstract
Current trends in desktop publishing (DTP) systems enable novices to prepare a variety of desktop publications. These systems provide limited graphic design support to users inexperienced in the graphic design domain. While to varying degrees they facilitate the deployment of text and image components by grid oriented and column based prescriptions, they do not address the universe of aesthetic issues. It is suggested that automatic procedures can provide reliable systematic evaluation of the aesthetic quality in a desktop publication for this group of users.
This study describes a novel procedure for the elicitation of aesthetic rules from graphic design experts. Experts were asked to diagnose bad symptoms in DTP layouts, and rules were derived from their diagnoses. The diagnosis of 'bad' design symptoms in a graphic layout is shown to be an effective method of making explicit the graphic designer's implicit, intuitive aesthetic judgements. A rudimentary but systematic procedure for the application of graphic design rules by non-designers, simulating expert graphic design evaluation, is reported. The preliminary design of a prototype rules-based system devised to complement the novice's design abilities and performance in the aesthetic evaluation of a graphic layout is described.
The results of the empirical tests show that some graphic designers employ intuitive, implicit aesthetic rules in the evaluation of a graphic layout and these can be made explicit; that graphic design rules can be applied systematically to a population of graphic layouts; expert graphic designers have rules, but they apply them inconsistently; and graphic design aesthetic expertise can be elicited and entered into a computer system to enact the role of a graphic designer. The performance of a systematic application of a graphic designer's rules is shown to be more consistent in design evaluation than the graphic designers from whom they were elicited.
It is concluded that a method has been established which allows some aspects of graphic design aesthetic evaluation to be systematised.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
