Our world is full of things competing for our consideration, yet our eyes can only focus on a relatively small area of our field of vision at any time. To address this challenge, our brains have evolved a way to prioritize what we should always examine. Even before we’ve had the chance to correctly decode and respect a design, its visual elements—colors, contrast, brightness, patterns—will have been absorbed effortlessly and given a priority rating by our brain. Neuroscientists call things with high visual precedence “visually salient.
” Designs that are visually salient get checked out in advance, more often, and for longer 2. The new Instagram logo depicts a camera, but in essentially the most minimal way, with just a square, a circle, and a dot. However, true to the 1st logo, it’s not a recent camera—it’s an old, 1970s or 80s, Polaroid type camera, sporting connotations of nostalgia, early life, family photos, and so on. It’s overlaid on a color array background. The warm colors notice that they haven’t used any cold colors convey energy and excitement.
They also look like a sunset, a time that filmmakers call the magic hour, when probably the most best images can be done. The sunset also incorporates connotations of the evening, nights out, fun, etc. Of course, most of these institutions can be brought on subconsciously, as most people won’t stop to think too hard concerning the design consciously.