Different types of wit
I’m about halfway into this book and it’s been a real eye-opener so far and really does make me smile in my mind. I can’t wait to get on to the remaining sections. I’ve taken quite a big section directly from the second chapter of the book and put it here, I especially want to remember these bits of information.
A Smile in the Mind: Witty thinking in graphic design
by Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart
Part two, pages 35-90
Pairs
Juxtaposition, the art of surprising contrasts, is at the core of wit. With these pairs, the comparison reverberates. Pairing may unite incompatibles, or highlight significant differences. In the first case, unexpected, unforced but unmistakeable similarities reveal the hidden links between unrelated, discordant or incongruous elements. In the second, a small change produces a somersault in meaning.
Ambiguity
This is a form of two-in-one design where the image can be seen two ways, like an optical illusion. You either see it as two books, or you see it as a tree. The image is not half one idea, half another. Both ideas are complete and whole, and the mind flip flops between the two. The artistry is in the synchronicity, as each detail in the design fits both readings. Flip and flop are separate ideas sharing a common form with minimal distortion.
Substitution
This is a classic two-in-one technique. The designer substitutes one element within the image to introduce the second idea. Success depends on introducing a rogue element, which is virtually similar but remote in meaning (and also accurate in terms of message). In the temporary fusion of two normally incompatible components, the designer achieves the essence of wit, both recognition and surprise.
Addition
Designers horn two ideas into a single shoe using a technique well known to the defacer of posters. A big statement is transformed by a small addition. In graphics, these additions often mimic graffiti, as scribbled marks or simple tag-ons divert the message into new track. What is added utterly changes yet obviously belongs.
Modification
Two-in-one again, this time with degrees of licence. The form of an image is tailored, slightly modified, rearranged in some way, exaggerated or taken to extremes, in order to introduce the second idea. There is almost no intervention at all in an example like the striped knitting. But reality is given a small push in the candlestick image, and a hefty shove in the tangling of the stave. Essentially, the object acts out of character, but within the limits of the believable.
Missing link
Wit usually starts from a cliché, which is then given a twist. In this case, though, the cliché is the end point. A clichéd phrase is the missing link, the bridge that spans a logical gap in the design. Once the missing link is supplied, everything makes sense. The viewer is forced to engage with the material by responding to the enigma, reading the clues, following where they lead, and supplying the concept or phrase of which the design is an expression.
Homage
Designers, who are virtuosos of genre and academicians of the visual cliché, are expert at grafting their messages on to existing icons. These are instantly understood, and half the communication job is done. This is piggy-back, hitch-a-lift, cuckoo-in-the-nest design. The wit is in both the choosing and using – spotting relevance, introducing reverberation and craftily faking the spoof design.
Trompe l’oeil
The collision here is between the real and the fake. Designers either mix illusion with reality, or use impeccable artifice to allow one thing to pretend to be another. The technique attracts those with a love of craft and is frequently used for books and packs. A book can be like a box, or the other way round.
Puns and rebuses
Puns exploit the different meanings of two words of the same or similar sound. Koestler defined the mechanism with great wit – ‘two strings of thought tied together by an acoustic knot’. The rule for puns, of course, is that both thoughts or meanings must be apposite. Puns can work even better in graphics than in text, since imagery gives the second strike added force. The rebus plays a similar game, driven by sound towards sight.
Taking it literally
Wit as translation – from the abstract to the concrete, or from word to image. Designers take the message literally and translate it directly from verbal to visual language. The witty collision occurs as parallel forms of expression meet. Design here is self-evident rather than enigmatic, providing an instant click as the mind makes the same leap.
Expectations confounded
This is graphic wit with a punchline. The design sets off in what seems an obvious direction, then changes tack: it sets up expectations, and explodes them. This technique exploits the brain’s wish to find a pattern. It tricks the mind with ambiguous cues, which turn out to be part of another game entirely. Familiarity and unexpectedness are not integrated but separated: first recognition, then surprise.
Incongruity
This is the juxtaposition that jars – the builder and the hummingbird, the Christmas gift and the barbed wire. Designers comment on ‘a’ by linking it with ‘b’, and the audience is directed to the crossover point where a new thought lurks. By combining ideas which usually conflict, designers force an examination of what is implicit within each – whether it is the holiness of the Helvetica typeface, or the ‘goo goo’ attitude towards children’s bricks.
Economy
Designers here are at their most frugal and sparing, taking over a requirement within the item itself as the vehicle for the idea. If there has to be an envelope, do something with it. If stationery is white, make whiteness count. Designers use what’s there, and build the idea out of a given element, whether that is a legal requirement, a characteristic of the medium, or whatever.
Coincidence
The Coincidence route is similar to the Economy route, where designers use a given element to carry the idea. The difference is that, where Economy draws on ‘a given’, which is standard, normal or straightforward, Coincidence exploits a freak circumstance or fortuitous connection. An element within the job is not only unusual in itself, it also coincides in some way with an idea or thought relevant to the message. The wit is not so much forged as spotted, as designers exercise a talent for observation and recognition.
Shift: time
Most communication lives in the ‘now’. This approach prefers the ‘before’ or ‘after’. The audience is invited to consider what happened first, or to guess what will follow. It is a storyteller’s technique, which focuses on sequence and on outcomes. Normal human curiosity is exploited as the audience is drawn into the design in order to fill the gaps in the story.
Shift: scale
A shift in scale disrupts expectation. As a technique, it simply, reliably and economically links recognition with surprise. Designers sometimes exploit quantity, sometimes the extremes of size, showing ordinary items as the giant or miniscule consequences of massive enlargement or near terminal miniaturization. In a two-in-one version of the technique, scales themselves collide in images that combine elements from different size worlds.
Shift: view
The familiar is dull: it lulls and bores the mind. A sudden upset of the familiar is like the drink that hits the spot. Designers here turn assumptions upside down or inside out by coming at the problem from an unexpected direction. The conventional point of view is reversed, inverted, rotated or transposed. Maybe the message does not lie in what is shown, but in what is missing. Viewers actively enter the conundrum, as they realign themselves to unlock the puzzle.
Alphabet
Observed similarities are a driving force in wit. Unexpectedly seeing ‘this’ as ‘that’ delivers both recognition and surprise. For designers with expertise in typography and identity, the alphabet is a playground. Things become letters and letters things. But it’s an ‘easy-ish’ game, like punning in newspaper headlines, and only the wittiest avoid the groans.
The face
This is another favourite playground. Some designers use the face to humanize or organize a design. Others portray individuals through the tools of their trade. The face lends itself to every kind of graphic treatment, as designers find out how minimal, playful, ingenious or unusual they can be.
Transformations
A gentle way of colliding two ideas is to turn the first into the second. Some designers do it gradually, in a continuous process, shading as it were from black to white. Others show the stages step by step. Or there may be an abrupt change from the first image to its alter ego.
Series of twists
Designers play tunes on an idea. They may use a constant, a fixed element, which takes on a new meaning each time it appears; or they may use a theme and provide the variations. The less room to manoeuvre – in other words, the more designers fence themselves in by restricting their choices – the more satisfying the wit.
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