An infatuated female, relaxingly reclining with her eyes shut and mouth smiling as her hair billows in the wind. The catalyst:
A male - one of whom she is clearly fond - manifesting their mutual affection by leaning in to kiss her.
In an arrangement such as this one, the woman's presence is unquestionable for several reasons. For one, she's appealing to lay eyes on in purely aesthetic terms. She is, to put it bluntly, a banger to behold.
On top of that, she's aligned in the very center of the scene and appears in the foreground, so much so that she, however partially, obscures the man positioned behind her.
As if that wasn't enough, whereas she is depicted with picture-perfect clarity, he is grudgingly forced to contend with being relegated to optical bluriness, and, ostensibly, becoming a blurry recollection in the mind of the onlooker.
With these facts in hand, her role as the main protagonist should be a shoo-in, right..?
Wrong.
Although the woman gracing the title card for 'Still There' seems to have most everything going for her in demanding your attention, a glaring omission is slowly making itself known:
The relationship between visibility and memorability is not - well, at least not always - a perfect correlation. But why is that, exactly?
For one, there's a big difference between visual and psychological focal points.
Yes, the unapologetically prominent woman takes up more visual real estate. And because of this, it is she that - between her and her male counterpart - is most noticeable. He, meanwhile, is not - barely at all, actually.
But it's here that things get interesting.
Precisely because the kisser appears blurry, he becomes fodder for curiosity - once finally detected - because he offers something that the recipient of his labial likings simply does not: he's mysterious, and hence - by extension - tantalizing.
Many a time, the way in which a focal point manifests in a piece of art - and in daily life, for that matter - is by way of psychological incitement, not graphical immediacy.
Try that on for size next time someone tells you graphic design isn't a social science.
A male - one of whom she is clearly fond - manifesting their mutual affection by leaning in to kiss her.
In an arrangement such as this one, the woman's presence is unquestionable for several reasons. For one, she's appealing to lay eyes on in purely aesthetic terms. She is, to put it bluntly, a banger to behold.
On top of that, she's aligned in the very center of the scene and appears in the foreground, so much so that she, however partially, obscures the man positioned behind her.
As if that wasn't enough, whereas she is depicted with picture-perfect clarity, he is grudgingly forced to contend with being relegated to optical bluriness, and, ostensibly, becoming a blurry recollection in the mind of the onlooker.
With these facts in hand, her role as the main protagonist should be a shoo-in, right..?
Wrong.
Although the woman gracing the title card for 'Still There' seems to have most everything going for her in demanding your attention, a glaring omission is slowly making itself known:
The relationship between visibility and memorability is not - well, at least not always - a perfect correlation. But why is that, exactly?
For one, there's a big difference between visual and psychological focal points.
Yes, the unapologetically prominent woman takes up more visual real estate. And because of this, it is she that - between her and her male counterpart - is most noticeable. He, meanwhile, is not - barely at all, actually.
But it's here that things get interesting.
Precisely because the kisser appears blurry, he becomes fodder for curiosity - once finally detected - because he offers something that the recipient of his labial likings simply does not: he's mysterious, and hence - by extension - tantalizing.
Many a time, the way in which a focal point manifests in a piece of art - and in daily life, for that matter - is by way of psychological incitement, not graphical immediacy.
Try that on for size next time someone tells you graphic design isn't a social science.