- So much of what we've covered has revolved
around the idea of the unexpected.
We create a more powerful experience by challenging
the way the audience expects the design to be.
For all our lives, we've watched movies
and television, looked at magazines and advertising.
These media share similar conventions with imagery
such as the appropriate way to crop an image,
and placement on the surface.
Conventional cropping gives us as designers
the opportunity to alter the status quo
and provoke the audience for stronger response.
Let's start with a couple of the nitty-gritty rules.
First, never crop a person at a joint
like their elbow or knee.
This slicing off of parts tends to make
someone appear as if they lost a limb or their head.
Second, focus on the subject.
Is there anything in the background
that doesn't add to the message?
Every element is a distraction from the primary focus.
Zoom in and crop these out.
Third, crop an image so the viewer recognizes the content.
If you crop too much, the viewer will find it
difficult to understand the image.
Now to break those rules, once you've mastered them,
identify why unorthodox cropping makes sense.
If it's arbitrary, it will only be style with no substance.
A catalog cover and poster for an exhibition
about Truman Capote and the writing of In Cold Blood
crops a contact sheet to show the relationship
between Capote and Harry Smith who was in prison.
Tight cropping on an image or typographic message is
another tool to ask a viewer to solve the puzzle.
We inherently will try to determine
what is missing and what we see.
A poster for Yamaha motorcycles is okay
when the designer politely places
the motorcycle horizontally on a street setting.
But it is more compelling when the image is
tightly cropped and more abstract.
Like working with extremes in scale,
this requires a willingness to zoom in
and really zoom in, not just a little bit.
You can always go back.
You're not forced to use the most recent iteration.
Let the communication direct the way
you crop an image.
The text for an ad for a medical laboratory is
about barbers as surgeons during the time
of Henry the eighth.
The image doesn't need to represent a specific person.
If it did, the viewer would ask, "Who is that?"
The focus on the beard directs the message
away from the individual and toward barbers.
We so often crop people nicely
with a head and shoulder.
But we see that every day on the news.
So shake it up a bit.
When working with a face, I like to use the form
as a cropping opportunity.
I can crop the face more tightly than expected.
This creates a dramatic effect as if the subject
of the piece is, forgive me, in your face.
The same effect can be used in sequence
as on this example.
Simple moving gifs sit behind the squares
of content that appear as the viewer looks for information.
The faces are cropped and interrupted by the content.
This creates anxiety with the visceral effect
of the viewer wanting to move the boxes away.
It's engaging and almost game-like as you move
from one page of the site to another.
Working with unorthodox cropping is not a license
to do sloppy work.
You still need to be aware of the tangents
of the images to the page.
It is critical to examine the entire image
and verify that there are no unwanted elements.
With our long experience of seeing
the expected cropping of images,
we can create significant changes
and experience using only a slight change
in the way a photograph, illustration,
or typography interacts with the edge of the page or screen.