Image and Text An image seen alone, without any text, is open to interpretation. Adding text to a picture changes its meaning.Text and image combine in endless ways. Text can be subordinate or dominant to a picture; it can be largeor small, inside or outside, opaque or transparent, legible or obscure.Text can respect or ignore the borders of an image. Putting type on top of high–contrast image poses legibility conflicts. Boxes, bars, and transparent color fields are some of the ways designers deal with the problem of separating text from image.
Framing is everywhere. A picture frame sets off a work of art from its surroundings, bringing attention to the work and lifting it apart from its setting. Shelves and pedestals, and vitrines provide a stage for displaying objects. A saucer frames a tea cup, and a placemat outlines the pieces of a tablesetting. Cropping, borders, margins, and captions are key resources of graphic design.
Margins provide a protective frame around the contents of a publication. They also provide space for information such as page numbers and running heads. Wider margins can emphasize a picture or a field of text as an object, calling our attention to it. Narrower margins can make the content seem larger than life, bursting at its own seams.
Bleeds An image “bleeds” when it runs off the edges of a page. The ground disappears, and the image seems larger and more active. An image can bleed off one, two, or three sides.The photograph reproduced here is the same scale in each instance, but its intimacy and impact change as it takes over more or less of the surrounding area.
BMCC Art 100, Professor Reinhardt 