Typographical “color” as a tool for intuitive picture layout
(cross posted from PixelJoint with a small preface added)
Pixel art can teach you a lot about design. It is a heavily restricted medium, and that forces you to prioritize, which is the essence of design work.
However, I think that most of the skills cultivated through pixel art can also be cultivated in a clearer and more scalable way through typography.
So I currently regard pixel art as more of a industrial/production medium, which I still enjoy working but I don't feel has that much left to teach me.
Anyone who is interested in dither patterns / other texturing might gain insight by learning and practicing the typographical concept of "color". Pretty much every harmonious, 'correct'[1] patterning, whether in perspective or not, can be broken down cleanly into regular patterns of "color". I've found this especially useful in thinking about scale and perspective in an intuitively correct way : the 'space' not being empty but being occupied by a pattern of "color" gives my mind a continuous path to follow, rather than being reduced to measuring lengths of spaces (an inherently fragmented process).
[1] as in, some drawings contain elements that seem like pictorial glitches. Tangents are one, but it can be something as minor as getting line weight slightly out of wack or a small discoloration, that draws attention back to an element for no good reason.
There is no particularly great online information about "color", but this is a competent summary. In my view it is functionally a way to unify negative and positive space into a 'value' (fullness, really) for an area, that approximately implies both. The typographical definition of "color" focuses on 2d pictorial space, but it can also be applied to the 3d space you are projecting into your 2d picture.









