Instructional Message Design: The Laws of Simplicity - Context

This week I'd like to focus on John Maeda's sixth law of simplicity, which is the law of context. We live in a world where ambiguity, misinterpretations etc have become so easily the norm, that to me, context is everything!😮

For Maeda, context is what brings different things into focus at different times...even on the same graphic. Context may even bring things from the foreground into the background and vice versa. I liken it to when I'm trying to have a conversation with someone and instead of focusing/paying attention to what I'm saying, they focus on other "background" elements such as my tone of voice (how I'm saying it), what I might be wearing, or even on details of the immediate surroundings such as a ringing cellphone, a ringing doorbell etc. For Maeda, these may not necessarily be distractions, because "that which appears to be of immediate relevance may not be nearly as important compared to everything else around" (Maeda, 2006, p. 54).

So with this principle in mind, I started looking to see instances where this actually occurs....and I thought it would be quite difficult to find such an occasion, but it turned out to be much easier than I thought. The image below was taken by a friend of mine who wanted to highlight the intense game of volleyball we were playing on the beach a few years ago - all friends of mine despite the intense competitiveness lol. But upon looking at the image (which was meant to show us having fun playing volleyball), I was soon preoccupied with the sky (the dark clouds that created the overcast conditions)...I remember looking at the picture with one of my friends in this picture who I was tutoring with his Geography studies at the time.....and it became an illustration for him to describe the atmospheric conditions that normally precede rainfall (e.g. cloud type etc). So for us, our preoccupation and love for Geography 😍😍😍 (context) influenced us to see/focus on the background of the image (such as the dark cloud cover) as opposed to focusing on the main reason the picture was taken to illustrate. Our geographical context allowed us to focus on the periphery than on the primary/original motif behind the picture.....and this is how Maeda's law of context may function.





I think this has implications on the way we understand the various communication functions of graphics, videos and online messages as outlined by Clark and Lyons (2010). Clark and Lyons (2010), identified these communication functions could be decorative, representational, relational etc. But I think context can definitely influence how much we focus/identify these various aspects of graphics.....for example, if I'm into visual Art (context), the image above might have more of a decorative emphasis for me......if I'm into tourism, or living in winter conditions (context) I may focus on the peripheral things such as the sea, the sand and sun, as opposed to the fact that volleyball is being played.

So focusing on this principle, has really helped me to have a totally new respect/regard for context not just in terms of text, but also in terms of graphic designs.

Your Turn:
Based on the aforementioned, what do you focus on in the graphics below....and feel free to explain what led you to focus on it:

Here's one:

Here's another:

I'm excited to see below what peripheral detail (make-up, facial expression or specific minion) stood out to you and why (context e.g. a memory or relationship etc). 😂