Meaning-making. The main purpose of our language is to trigger some kind of meaning to the perceiver. So does drawings as a language symbol, the illustrator must made their drawings had this kind of meaning to—at least himself—the audiences.
The greatest roadblock for many painters/ designer/ illustrators mainly didn’t come from the skill areas. Sometimes, one thing that hit us the most was how to put such intangible and unspeakable ideas into the concrete projection of drawings. That is—to say—to put a very subjective matter into objective understanding. To simplify the ideas (that mainly didn’t come in linguistic form) and making it meaningful. And hell, we had to through this kind of problem in daily basis.
Simplifications of idea in the visual media required a careful approach, you may not cut your idea down randomly—for it’ll cut the whole meaning as well. One philosophical ideas that I kept my whole life was Occam’s Razor. This the tool which I used to 'cut' everything to their simplest core, without cutting any original meanings or ideas.
The term coined by 14th-century English thinker, William of Ockham (though it was Bertrand Russell whose introduced me to it). The main idea of Occam's Razor is:
'Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem'
or
'Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.'
Many more thinkers and great figures re-shaped this statement over time. Leonardo Da Vinci had his own quote,
'Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.'
Isaac Newton got his own cool version,
'We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.'
And Einstein stated in the same fashion,
'Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.'
Thanks to the bias and misquotes, for today the Occam's Razor known best for
'The simplest explanation that covers all the facts is usually the best.'
At first there are no strict explanations how to apply this Razor in daily life (let alone the visual media), but Ludwig Wittgenstein (the disciples and partner-in-crime of Bertrand Russell, and also my favorite philosopher) set the applicable method so that the Razor could be installed in daily problem. Luki (my dearly nickname for Ludwig Wittgenstein….hahaha) explained that the true nature of this Razor is the eradication of error through the clarification of language. A principle he called himself logical atomism. A logically perfect language according to him would remove all ambiguity by reducing facts to their simplest components. Here goes the example:
Gilang Danu is cool.
(a simple statement, huh, take a look at here as I'm trying to break it down by its 'atomic facts')
1. There is a Gilang Danu
2. There is only one Gilang Danu
3. Whatever is Gilang Danu is cool.
See, just follow those atomic facts closely, and the first statement would all gone clear. This is the most efficient simplification according to Luki.
Now, how could this intangible philosophical ideas could be applied to visual media, like drawings? I must stated, in the terms of drawings I created a separation between two main ‘islands’, based on the subject: abstract and concrete. We have more freedom to construct and imply our meanings the more abstract the subject is. If a subject is more explicit, less is required of the audience to construct its own meaning because it is designed more concretely. When we abstract an image… we are not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details.
By stripping down an image to its essential meaning, an artist can amplify that meaning. Look at my example down below.
1. There’s a real photograph of me smiling, let’s simplify it.
2. Now, we got a comical-realistic drawing, with shadow and all. A simplification from the photo version.
3. Now, we strip down the shadow and the complexity, to make it more simpler. Here’s a cartoony-basic drawing of Calvin smiled.
4. Now, the last: we got this. A universal symbol of happiness.
By making the same face more and more abstract by taking features away, it allows the face to mean more. The first photograph represents me alone, and not anybody else, smiling. While the last picture, it represents billions of people. The sequence progresses from meaning just one face, to meaning all faces. One faces represents many. That is the main idea. Just like the example in linguistic form I gave above: one specific characteristic of Gilang Danu could be broke down into many parts without so much cutting the meanings of the subjects. Of course the detail would be at loss, but the ‘bigger picture’ appeared hundred times greater. To make something specific became simpler may seems so naive and ‘stupid’ for some people, but this kind of approach is truly beneficial in our daily life, it isn’t a way to cut the meanings, not an escape from details and avoid the problems. In this kind of simplification, you can’t say I’m avoiding the problems to make all the details, no, the problems have been eliminated in my concept-making process. The smiley symbol may look simple, but the process of making it was rich and complicated. How lesser words could made richer meanings, and how partial information could triggered deeper meanings that is the magic of intuitions.
That is amplification through simplification. That’s how we could interpret one simple smiley into greater understandings, and allowing our imaginations to wander around without losing its grip to the original meanings.
