This is a graduate research study on visual narrative structure for master of visual communication design.
Brand identity design plays an important role in branding. In the past, a brand identity was just a mere logo mark, which was used for brand recognition. The purpose of this mark was an attempt to help their consumers differentiate them with the other competitors in the market. In 2000s, branding is no longer about navigating your identity and distinguishing yourself with the competitors, but involving the emotional attachment at the same time to build and maintain brand’s relationship with their customers. Talking about emotional attachment, there is nothing better than a storytelling. To build and control the development of a story in text-based work is not difficult because the story in text-based work is built according to the writing and reading system because the writing and reading system in text-based work is strict and systematic. Meanwhile, the visual story of two-dimensional image is not easy to build since it is hard to clearly determine which is the beginning, the middle, the ending in the story, and which direction the story would develop with only visual elements.
This is where the idea of visual narrative structure came to me and I was constantly thinking about how it would work on the brand identity design to make it easier and more straightforward to convey the story to the audience.
To create the visual narrative, there are two main factors; sequence and visual direction. Sequence illustrates the connection between one object with another to construct the linear factor in storytelling. Visual direction is the reading flow of the readers. The direction plays an important role in visual narrative structure since it would
decide which part is the beginning, middle, and ending of the story. As a result, controlling the visual direction is controlling the way that readers look at and controlling the flow of the story.
decide which part is the beginning, middle, and ending of the story. As a result, controlling the visual direction is controlling the way that readers look at and controlling the flow of the story.
Taking advantage of the systematic reading direction which people were used to, I let the story development flow from top to bottom, and left to right as the reading flow was created. There was none confusing reading direction here because of the compatibility between my desired reading direction with the reading direction which people were used to.
With only one guiding frame, the reading direction in the second case turned out to be even easier to follow, and gave out a more seamless vibe of the visual story. There was also none confusing reading direction here because of a unified reading direction from the same guiding frame.
When I tried combining all the visual directions of the non-layered visual narrative structure to lead the story, there were two visual narrative result happens as above. The reading direction I want is top to bottom, and left to right. However, I realized that because the visual contrast was not clear and the story’s starting point was not prominent as well as the visual direction was not explicit, the visual narrative direction could confuse the readers.
Within the story in the book, the reading direction and the focus of the story are in a clear direction and systematic reading rules, so it is easy for readers to follow. Within a visual story, it is difficult to determine which part is the opening, the body, and the end. As in the previous case, because the starting point could not be navigated, the reading direction might be confused. So I applied strong visual contrast in the beginning to grab the reader's attention immediately, and then applied frames to link the scenes in the story in the reading direction and story development that I desired.
When building the story in the next identity, I applied the frame of the non-layered visual narrative structure. To create the cohesion for this visual story, I used visual elements like triangles and horizontal stripes to link the scenes above to the bottom. However, when I finished the artwork, I realized that the visual direction of the whole story was not only in the direction I expected, but could also form a rather confusing reading direction as the figure above.
Therefore, to make the visual direction of the story more recognizable, I took advantage of the directional shape of the frames to create a connection between the above scene with the below scene.
Utilizing the systematic reading direction which people normally read in text-based works, I applied the guiding reading line to be the visible reading direction to direct the story development and people’s reading direction in this fifth identity case.
When I did the sixth identity case, I would like to try to create the story development based on the transition of colors. As I mentioned above, as long as the visual contrast was well controlled, the reading direction could be well managed. The strongest visual contrast I put at the castle where I wanted it to be the beginning of the story, and slowly the colors transition created the flow of the story to the end.
People could figure out the reading direction was from outside to inside. To avoid the confused reading direction, I needed to let people know at once which visual element was the beginning of the visual story. Taking advantage of people’s systematic reading direction, I also applied the visual contrast to the visual elements from lower left side. As a result, people’s eyes would be drawn to the lower left side first, then bounced to the lower right side, upper left side and finally upper right side.
Wondering whether moving the visual elements would change to visual direction or not, I tested out the second case with the same visual narrative structure as below. After completing the visual story of the two cases, an interesting thing happened that the “visual direction speed” of the first case was much faster than the second case. Therefore, I realized that not only the visual contrast greatly affects the visual story, but also the placement of each scene.
In addition to identity design, I believed the visual narrative structure could be applied in many ways to two-dimensional images. Therefore, in the compilation of visual narrative structure, I tried applying visual narrative structure and illustration to create a simple poster. After completing this poster, I felt that thanks to the application of the visual narrative structure, the story development flow in the poster delivered a clearer and more coherent message.
Graduate thesis for Master of Visual Communication Design, Kookmin University
Copyright to Nguyen Ngoc Minh Thu
