15 closure

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (IRISH, 1856–1950) Playwright

clo·sure \'klō-zhər\ n

1: the process or ability to fill in missing parts of a visual stimulus; a Gestalt principle of visual organization holding that there is an innate tendency to perceive incomplete objects as complete

In visual communications, closure can basically be described as a visual illusion. Closure literally means the act of closing or the condition of being closed. It is also a definitive finish or conclusion. As human beings, we have an innate need to make sense of what we see; therefore, if we anticipate a form we will always complete it. In human nature, we are constantly searching for resolution in everything we see and do. We have been taught to strive for the perfect balance in our lives. Even when we experience something incomplete or imperfect, we continually look for closure or a better-balanced sense of resolution.

In personal relationships we always expect a happy ending. When this doesn’t occur, we feel unrest and disappointment. This is a example of our basic human need for resolution. In visual communications, closure is an equivalent visual resolution.

In the identity, stationery, and website for the Max Protetch Gallery, the appearance of the x in the logotype is only partially closed and incomplete, bringing an additional visual nuance to the program. This form of closure provides an interactive engagement with the viewer, allowing them to fill in the blanks and ultimately create a visual conclusion.

LAURA GRALNICK, Student

RICHARD POULIN, Instructor

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS

New York, NY, USA

Precision and accuracy are essential visual metaphors for this symbol identifying O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, a financial investment firm. A circular O letterform is pierced and interrupted by an arrowlike apostrophe pointing to its center. The viewer can immediately complete the full circular profile of the letterform; however, interrupting the letterform in this manner not only creates visual interest but also adds meaning to its overall message.

C+G PARTNERS LLC

New York, NY, USA

It is also dependent on the distance from one object or shape to another. When related objects are too far apart from one another, they have no immediate and apparent visual relationship. When related objects are composed in close relationship to one another, they become meaningful and therefore related. They also become complements to one another, creating tension and engaging the viewer in a more immediate manner.

Closure is most successful when visual elements in a composition are simple and singular, recognizable patterns, such as geometric shapes. When shapes and patterns are not easily understood, they become unfamiliar; therefore, closure will not occur in the mind of the viewer.

1955

Theaterbau von der Antike bis zur Moderne

(Theater Construction in Antiquity and Modernity) Exhibition Poster

ARMIN HOFMANN

Zurich, CH

Armin Hofmann and the Austellung Helmhaus

For over forty years, ARMIN HOFMANN (b. 1920) has devoted his life to teaching art, design, and the principles of visual perception and communications. His students’ works are benchmarks of visual excellence, as well as the envy of students and teachers of graphic design worldwide.

In 1937, he studied foundation art at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich; he also worked as a draftsman and lithography apprentice in Winterthur and as a lithographer and designer in various studios in Basel, Switzerland.

Hofmann began his career as an influential educator at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts (later known as Schule fur Gestaltung or AGS) at the early age of 26. He followed Emil Ruder (Swiss, 1914–1970) as the head of its graphic design department and was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the International Typographic Style or Swiss School.

His teaching methods and maxims were unorthodox and broad based, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions throughout the world. His independent insights as an educator, married with his rich and innovative powers of visual expression, created a body of work enormously varied—books, exhibitions, stage sets, logotypes, symbols, typography, sign systems, and most memorably, posters.

His exhibition poster titled Theaterbau von der Antike bis zur Moderne for the Austellung Helmhaus in Zurich is a simple, compositional study in black and white, figure–ground, and closure, engaging the viewer with the compositional elements and principles of asymmetry, tension, contrast, and scale.

His posters are widely recognized for their contrasts in simplicity and complexity, representation and abstraction. They have a direct and immediate connection to the viewer’s eye—engaging, challenging, and communicative. They pique interest and convey a clean and understandable message. Hofmann’s posters are pure and symbolic visual statements. He has written that “a poster does more than simply supply information on the goods it advertises; it also reveals a society’s state of mind.”

Paul Rand (American, 1914–1996), a close friend and longtime colleague of Armin Hofmann, has described Hofmann’s contributions to the graphic design profession: “Few of us have sacrificed so much time, money and comfort for the sake of their profession as has Armin Hofmann. He is one of the few exceptions to Shaw’s dictum, ‘He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.’ His goals, though pragmatic, are never pecuniary. His influence has been as strong beyond the classroom as within it. Even those who are his critics are as eager about his ideas as those who sit at his feet. As a human being, he is simple and unassuming. As a teacher, he has few equals. As practitioner, he ranks among the best.”

This identity system for an exhibition titled Graphic Design in China relies solely on fluorescent light installations evident in each exhibition venue that spell out the names of each designer and the disciplines represented in the exhibition. Custom letterforms were photographed and used as primary elements in a series of promotional posters for the exhibition. These illuminated, stencil-like letterforms are another visual representation of the design principle of closure in graphic design.

SENSE TEAM

Shenzhen, CN

Closure is the recognition of meaning in an unclear or incomplete composition because the viewer has been able to draw on previous experiences to discover sufficient similarity between it and individual memories. It allows the viewer to bring something to an ultimate, visual conclusion.

By providing this opportunity in a composition, you also create an interactive experience for the viewer. They become engaged with the visual communication and therefore become more intimately involved with the visual process of assimilation, understanding, and memory.

Elements of this branding program for Bergen Street Studio, an architecture, planning, and interior design firm, rely upon the principle of closure to further engage the viewer. For example, the announcement card shows bergenst anchored to the right side of the card as if it continues off the page. On its reverse side, the word continues as reet as well as the full name of the firm. This compositional device is considered a form of visual closure, allowing the viewer to fill in the blank.

POULIN + MORRIS INC.

New York, NY, USA

Stencil-like, typographic “scraps” or fragments give an unusual, hybrid appearance to these letterforms. The visually inconsistent characteristics of this logotype for Scrap House, a temporary demonstration home blitz-built using scrap and salvaged materials, provides visual interest and engages the viewer to complete this puzzlelike image.

MENDE DESIGN

San Francisco, CA, USA

Closure also provides us with balance and harmony. Visual closure gives you the same results. Even if your goal is to create tension in a composition, closure is still part of the compositional equation.

This design principle enables you to reduce complexity and increase visual interest in a composition by relying upon simple and recognizable elements to communicate information. For example, a logotype composed of recognizable elements such as multiple, repetitive lines does not need to complete many or all of its lines and contours to be meaningful and effective. Reducing the number of lines in the logotype not only reduces the visual complexity of the logotype, it also makes it more engaging for viewers to complete in their own mind.

Acquire New York, a licensed real estate brokerage firm, caters to affluent residential real estate buyers. Its logotype relies upon traditional serif typography, graphic patterning evocative of engraved currency and stock certificates, rich saturated colors, and fragmented linear brackets framing all of these elements into one cohesive unit. While a fully closed frame is not needed, it is implied through the visual principle of closure.

POULIN + MORRIS INC.

New York, NY, USA

For example, when individual line segments are positioned along a circular path, they are first perceived holistically as a circle, and then as multiple, independent line segments. Our tendency to perceive information in this way is automatic and subconscious; it is most likely a function of an innate preference for simplicity over complexity, and pattern over randomness.

Many forms of visual storytelling rely on closure in a similar way. For example, in film and comic books, singular and discrete scenes are presented to the viewer, who in turn supplies what occurs in between each scene. Essential information is provided by the storyteller, and the remaining information is provided by the viewer.

By using this fundamental design principle effectively and creatively, you can enhance immediacy, interest, and understanding in your work.

Coral Technologies is a software provider that bases its business on continuous communication and connectivity with its clients. Its symbol uses simple, stylized imagery to communicate this essential need for continuity with two separate icons. The viewer, however, sees these icons immediately as a holistic whole before acknowledging that they are literally and visually distinct and separate.

TRIBORO

Brooklyn, NY, USA

This acronym-based logotype for BLT Architects, a full-service architectural design firm, comprises a series of san serif monumental letterforms in two distinct weights and framed with two linear corner brackets. These two line elements imply a fully resolved, continuous, and articulated square frame. However, by using only partial fragments of the square, an illusion allows the viewers to close the frame in their own mind’s eye.

POULIN + MORRIS INC.

New York, NY, USA

The large-scale, sans serif letterforms used in this poster for La Radio dans le Noir are of ample scale and familiarity to withstand the overlay of geometric forms that block and fragment their identity and reading. The viewers ultimately resolve each individual letterform in their own mind, therefore retaining their identity and meaning as well as the overall visual impact and meaning of this powerful typographic composition.

CATHERINE ZASK

Paris, FR