Picture, the core element of visual art. It plays an important role in every field of visual communication design. As known to all, effective picture is not only image, but also message. This communication of image is even more effective than by words. Someone said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, this is a good measure for evaluating a good picture within a communication. Usually, it called graphic language in area of design. Graphic language like word, it comes from creative ideas. It can be presented by all kinds of visual style. Even it is not a picture as we expected, but a broad stroke of colour, a word or something else that forms an image in the given work. Graphic language is one of the most important languages of communication in posters, books, packages, identity programmes and time-based multimedia. No matter how developed the media technology in the future, it would be a everlasting subject for research.Effective graphic language can reinforce the message or move the communication along. This is the reason of its existence and development.
The diversity of aesthetics between Chinese and Western
Many different characteristics existed in Chinese and Western poster graphic language. Obviously, the reason of difference are partly relevant to their respective traditional culture. It is meaningless to look on the phenomenon of art regardless its background culture. So firstly, we should understand the basic characteristics of Chinese and Western art in traditional position.
Chinese
On Chinese aesthetics, the most notable characteristic is emphasizing a sense of underlying harmony, especially in Chinese painting. Taoism is one of the main religions in China, it offers to combine the opposites and balance each other. Chinese aesthetics was influenced deeply by Taoism. It was Taoist theory that things brought into contact with each other, or arranged together, influenced each other.(Philip Rawson, Loaszlo Legeza,1973) Its symbol Yin-Yang, composed by mutual black and white.
It means the physical world is whole of inseparable differences, every thing exists with every thing else. There exists no Yang without Yin in it, nor Yin without Yang.(Philip Rawson, Loaszlo Legeza,1973) The objects represented in a painting will have their proportions of Yang and Yin carefully combined and harmonized.(Philip Rawson, Loaszlo Legeza,1973) For example, mountain and water, heaven and earth, light and dark, dry and wet. In landscape, we can find these factors composed a spectacular and eternal harmonious world. As far as modern poster is concerned, communication is its core mission. Under the background of internationalization, for fulfilling its duty, Chinese poster designers studied a lot of notions and methods from Western design. However, Chinese modern poster was still influenced by Chinese traditional aesthetics in some extent. Many Chinese posters kept this aesthetics character of landscape in their images. Every factor comprises a twofold aspect visible-invisible. Namely Yang-Yin. As the famous saying: A Yin, a Yang this the Tao!