One of the things that my group had to take into consideration most during this activity was the placement of our quotation on the page from “My Name is Red”. While we haven’t actually made the print yet, we had to decide if we should center some of the lines or keep them aligned all the way to the left side. It made me think about how the way in which something is printed can affect its reading and interpretation. Top of the page or bottom, positioned toward the left or centered, quotes can be given different levels of importance. We decided that we will probably place the quote all the way to the top left, so that it catches a viewer’s attention immediately but does not necessarily dictate how they interpret picture that we will draw below it in the way that a centered quote might. We thought putting it to the side may imply a more loose or even fluid connection between the two ideas.
Our quote from “My Name is Red” is: “Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.”
The connection between this quote and the picture we plan to draw is the concept of differing perspectives, opinions, and writing/artistic styles of each of the characters that we read the narratives of throughout the novel.
Julia,
I think your observation about the connection between where the text is placed on a page, especially a page containing an image, and the value these words are given is really interesting. It’s true that having the words centered or at the very top seems to give them more authority in defining the image that accompanies them, probably because that’s where we’re used to seeing titles. This makes me think about Julia Jacquette’s book, which I flipped through today after class. In some of her panels, the text follows the form of the image like a border rather than being placed underneath it like a caption. I think this is an interesting technique that shows how images and words can work together to convey a message, rather than one having to be defined by the other.