Perspective

As one who crafts for profit, I am very aware of the value of my time. One thing that speeds up my production process is practice, of course.

But beyond that, I look for any shortcuts that don’t compromise the quality – or better yet the perceived – quality of the finished product.

About two HP printer generations ago, I delivered business cards to Jay. Jay has owned and operated several printing plants and is very accustomed to searching for flaws on printed matter.

He kindly suggested that I consider upgrading my printer because the newer printers didn’t blur the ink as much. I had to put on two pair of glasses to see the blur he was referring to.

Jay asked how I cut my cards, since mine is a small home-based business. He was surprised to learn I cut them using a desktop guillotine paper cutter. “You cut them by hand! How can you get them so uniform?”

What was odd about this discourse is that the cards were not perfectly uniform in size. When packaged up in a neat little stack, the slightly larger cards camouflaged those that were a fraction of an inch smaller.

I know my cards are not exactly the same size, but not one customer (out of hundreds) has ever commented on that. Recently, as I was cutting out some very small address labels (1 ¼- by 2 ¾-inch), I realized why. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Our Eyes Play Tricks on Us – or Do They?

All the lines are straight and perpendicular. Check them with a ruler if you don’t believe me. Yet the central sphere appears to bulge off the page. Why?

Such optical illusions exist because of the truly marvelous way our brains and eyes work together to perceive the three-dimensional world around us. The brain processes what the eye sees like an image projected onto a flat screen, because our visual field is, in fact, two-dimensional.

If you’ve taken any drawing classes, you probably learned how to size and slant things so that they appear closer or further away.

If you are a photographer, you know that if you shoot a large object too close up by angling your camera, the photo will have perspective “distortion” (which can be corrected, by the way, by many graphics programs like Photoshop Elements).

What occurred to me recently, as I was cutting tiny address labels, is that my cuts do not have to be perfectly straight and perpendicular for them to appear so.

My design influences how the edges are perceived. Because of that, the eyes are accustomed to ignoring many visual “distortions”. Sometimes they perceive what the brain expects to see (right-angled corners on address labels).

When faced with something uncommon, the perception is influenced by the Gestalt, the image as a whole (as in the optical illusion above).

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