2. TEXTURE: The actual or illusory tactile value of a
natural or a man-made surface. Tactile refers to the
sense of touch. Touch can be experienced anywhere
on the body where sensory nerve endings are present.
Categories of tactile sensations
• surface architecture: smooth - rough
• pressure resistance: hard – soft
• pressure depth: light – tickle, heavy - pain
• surface seismology: vibration frequency and
regularity of occurrence.
• surface temperature: cold, heat
• surface consistency conditions: wet, dry,
slimy, etc.
3. Texture is unique among the visual elements in
so far as it can stimulate two sensory processes at
the same time – the visual and the tactile.
In both 3-D and 2D design, we can vicariously
experience the sensations of touch through
vision.
Designers employ textural values to
communicate such things as age, state of
repair;
state of solidity, roughness, smoothness,
softness, hardness, dryness, abrasion, etc.
4. Textures, therefore, fall into two broad
categories:
I.
Tactile/ Visual (literal): Things we can
sense by touching and seeing.
II. Purely Visual: Things whose surface
quality is sensed through sight only. (The
tactile is either imperceptible, or not
consistent with visual cues.)
5. There are four types of visual / tactile textures.
A. NATURAL RAW - Natural - observable both with
the naked eye and under special conditions
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15. B. NATURAL - CRAFTED: Created in nature but
altered or arranged by man to fulfill a need.
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22. C. MAN MADE - RAW: Man made and and left in
its raw form.
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27. D. Man made - Crafted - Man made but shaped or
crafted into a specific form, concrete block, plastic
cup, steel guitar.
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31. E. Natural or man made corroded eroded naturally or
artificially.
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36. II. Purely Visual: There are several types. Three
common types
are:
A. Observed with special instrumentation such
as microscope, telescope, special filters, or
devices.
Butterfly sperm
Microscope
50. B. Observed under special or alternative conditions
Texture difficult or impossible to experience in a way
other than visually. such as: different atmospheric,
light, dynamics (movement), temperature etc.
turbulent sea, puffy clouds,
58. C. Simulative a 2D texture, of a graphic nature,
which attempts to imitate the surface
characteristics of 3D materials, surfaces or
objects, photographs, projections, wood or
granite Formica, trompe l'oeil paintings (fool
the eye).
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67. D. Decorative - a 2D texture, of graphic or surface
relief nature, which either forms a pattern such as a
wallpaper pattern, or a graphic surface treatment
such as a collage.
