What do classical music & visual design have in common?
It is no mystery that many of the words used to describe the foundations of music, especially that of classical music — rhythm, form, texture, etc. share their vocabulary with visual design. Music and design, while appealing to two different senses, sound and sight, are not so different from each other. Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists have found that the human brain learns to make sense of these stimuli, sight and sound, in the same manner, and according to Dr. Petra Vetter, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway “… the visual cortex is sensitive to what we hear, not just what we see.” We translate sound into visual imagination, and what better sound than music that has been composed with narrative and often visuals in mind?
There is often a disassociation between most people and the thought of the relevance of classical music. A quick google search offers insight into our relationship to classical music with autofill suggestions for “Classical music is” with “elitist, dying and white.” While there can be truth in these sentiments, classical music still has its part in shaping western history, even if it isn’t at the forefront of thought. Not only do ads for pasta sauce still blast Italian opera in the background, but the majority of popular music produced today is based on principals developed out of classical music. While unseen it still influences what we listen to.
In the same way, design is not often deeply thought about by those outside of the field, and yet shapes the world in which we live. Our world is filled to the brim with problems and problem solving is managed through design. A bookshelf is designed to organize books in a less obtrusive manner, aqueducts were designed to divert sewage flow away from the city of Rome, a poster’s graphic design is laid out to point onlookers to pertinent information. Good design doesn’t need to be seen to be understood, it needs to work (although if it happens to be beautiful, bonus points.)
Design and music are not only connected by the brain’s ability to process senses in a similar manner or in their far-reaching, sometimes invisible, influence on the world, but their structural components are reflected in one another.
Knowledge of one just field, music or design, can inform the appreciation and understanding of the other. Rhythm, pattern, balance, movement, repetition, proportion, unity (unison), variety (harmony), emphasis, texture, color, line and shape, are principles for the composition of both sight and sound. By looking at the foundations and function of western classical music, considerations for solid visual design principles arise.
Know Your Audience
Know who you are designing for just as a composer writes for his audience. J.S. Bach’s compositions reflect his various audiences, as well as who was paying his bill. He wrote numerous church cantatas during his long employment at Leipzig in which he was responsible for a weekly choral service. Comparatively while under patronage of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, Bach no longer composed church music as the Calvinist court had no use for choruses. He used the same beautiful and masterful approach as a composer to his pieces, but focused his intent to serve different functions for different people. Visual designers make the same adjustments for their audiences as Bach did in 1700s.
Charles and Ray Eames’ famous molded plywood furniture designs appealed to the growing middle class of mid 20th century by creating affordable, mass-produced furniture, but this wasn’t their only consumer base. One of the design team’s initial consumers (their audience) was for the US Navy. Focusing on using their plywood techniques on creating splints for WWII veterans they were able to replace problematic metal splints that could lead to gangrene. Post WWII they were able to, with subsequent Navy funding, create the “Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman,” a now-famous luxury item inspired by 19th-century English club chairs. This was a departure from their earlier customer demographics. No longer economically mass-produced plywood furniture, or functional splints for veterans, now an opulent statement for affluent clients. They successfully applied the same design principles and innovative plywood techniques to different projects to suit different users and audiences needs.
Designers need to be flexible as different audiences will have different expectations and needs.
Familiarity is Favored
This is not meant to suggest a lack of creativity, but familiar patterns are more widely accepted and understood. The most frequently programmed, and therefore popular composers performed across American symphonic concert halls are Romantic-era composers. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Wagner, Debussy and the Liszt goes on. “Classical Music” is a catch-all phrase used to represent western art music, but the Classical-era lasted, in fact, for a very short period of time, succeeded by the Romantic-era in the later half of the 19th century. This is the music we think of when we think “Classical Music” as it is the most played and therefore most familiar. Romantic-era composers maintain their popularity as they kept the forms and well-known structure of the Classical-era. They did not feel constrained by form, instead were quite at ease breaking ridged chordal and rhythmic boundaries of the day. The overall structure of these pieces are familiar, but there is deviation from the expected to create interest and new meaning. This is a practice that should be sought in design.
Introducing too many new elements without explanation or connotation can overwhelm and disorient users. Compare the darlings of the Romantic-era to some 20th century composers who, like Arnold Schoenberg, completely threw the traditional rule book out the window and created an entirely new system for tonal organization. His music is primarily appreciated by those who have studied music theory and history. Otherwise it is overlooked, devalued, and disliked by the public at large because it represents a musical system they cannot understand without the privilege of study. In the same way designing a new interface solely for other educated designers’ appreciation cannot be successful no matter its ingenuity and creativity. It has to have a broader appeal, and to do that, familiarity is needed. If something is void of all familiar touch points it will absolutely frustrate users, increase cognitive overload, and lead to failure.
Push the boundaries of the expected, stretch your chord progression, be creative, but departing from all conventionality for the sake of originality could, and probably will, alienate your audience.
Build Your Orchestra
An orchestra is filled with instrumentalists unifying around a central piece, creating highly structured and organized layers of rhythms, tonalities and timbres (or color) to create a greater meaning. Each layer of sound is integral to communicate the overall picture, but none more so than the baseline.
You’ve probably been in a setting in which ambient, background music lightly plays while you go about your business (shops, elevators, offices, restaurants, all do this.) Without attentively listening you realize you recognize the song. You may even know all the words, but it doesn’t sound right. You can’t quite follow the tune. This is often due to the inability to hear the baseline in these large auditory spaces. The baseline is the foundation on which the piece rests. Without out it the listener is disoriented and disrupts all recognition of key.
Within the context of visual design you need to build from your “baseline”, your foundation, up. This is your grounding orchestra member: knowledge. Your knowledge of your users from research and testing, of the current market and domain, of your client and stakeholder’s goals, and of design principles and visual strengths combine to create a solid foundation for your designs to come. From your knowledge, you can build structures of narrative and emotion. You can then add other members to your orchestra: color, pattern, movement, repetition, space and texture until you’ve created the perfect new “sound” for uplifting your goal and story.
Classical music and visual design are about intention and communication. It’s up to the composer/designer to create a space for these to flourish.
