How can we create a setting, which places a vulnerable little girl (Little Red Riding Hood) in the woods applying composition principles in the graphic design?

1. First, let’s create a setting of woods.

2. In order to create a forest, we make the woods with more triangles.

3. To get relief from the triangles, the long, vertical rectangles of varying lengths and widths are made to represent branchless tree trunks.

(Rule 2: Vertical shapes are more exciting and more active. Vertical shapes rebel against the earth’s gravity. They imply energy and a reaching toward heights or the heavens.)

4. Little Red Riding Hood has made her entrance to the woods. She is connected with one of the trees and is partly covered by it.

5.When Little Red Riding Hood becomes smaller, the woods are somewhat scarier.

6. Little Red Riding Hood is reduced more to make her seem even more overwhelmed by the situation.

7. When we tilt some three trucks, and move Little Red Riding Hood up, Little Red Riding Hood is visually trapped underneath a pointed arch made by two

trees. The diagonal lines give a feeling of movement or tension to the picture, as with the leaning trees that seem to be falling or about to fall.

(Rule 3: Diagonal shapes are dynamic because they imply motion or tension.)

(Rule 4: The upper half of a picture is a place of freedom, happiness, and triumph; objects placed in the top half often feel more "spiritual." The bottom half of a picture feels more threatened, heavier, sadder, or more constrained; objects placed in the bottom half also feel more "grounded." An object placed higher up on the page has "greater pictorial weight.”)

8. Now how should the wolf look like? Because the Little Red Riding Hood on the left is tiny, we decide to make the wolf on the right big, pointy, and sharp to be scary.

9. How about if the wolf was made smaller?

(Rule 5: The larger an object is in a picture, the stronger it feels.)

10. How about if the wolf was changed to curves?

(Rule 6: We feel more afraid looking at pointed shapes; we feel more secure or comforted looking at rounded shapes or curves.)

11. How about if the wolf was made from a paler color?

12. How can we make the wolf even scarier?

13. To make the wolf feel frightening, we add the teeth to him.

14. What else does the wolf need in order to look more wolfish? It’s an eye! The eye with a long diamond or lozenge shape emphasizes the pointiness of a real wolf’s eye but getting rid of the curves. But the pale blue color does not look right.

15. The color of the eye is replaced to be red to be scarier.

(Rule 7: We associate the same or similar colors much more strongly than we associate the same or similar shapes.)

16. What else do we need to know to make the wolf even more frightening? It’s his intent to eat the Little Red Riding Hood! So, we add a tongue. The tongue is a bigger mass of red that draws much attention to the viewers.

17. One more step to make the wolf scarier is the color of background. The simpler solid mauve background implied nighttime, and night feel scarier.

(Rule 8: White or light backgrounds feel safer to us than dark backgrounds because we can see well during the day and only poorly at night.)

18. How to further pop out the intention of the wolf to eat the Little Red Riding Hood? We replace the color of teeth with white in contrast with the dark background. Then this picture is supposed to be scary because of its context: a hungry wolf wanted to eat a lone girl in the woods.

(Rule 9: We notice contrasts. Contrasts enable us to see.)

(Rule 10: The center of the page is the most effective "center of attention." It is the point of greatest attraction. )

From: Bang, Molly. (1991). Picture This: Perception & Composition, p.12-54.