Texture

"Texture is the visual element that serves as a stand-in for the qualities of another sense, touching" (Donis 1973).

Tactile textures are often visual textures as light creates tonal variations between the different surfaces of a material. The variations of tonal value help the viewer understand the environment we see and textures on surfaces help us clarify distance, volume, depth and scale. The closer one is to something the sharper the texture he sees. This optical quality has been a powerful tool for artists in representing the physical three-dimensional space.

The designer needs to understand the relationships between the tonal values and what they communicate. Lines, dots and patterns within a shape can help us distinguish one shape from the other but depending on the texture's tonal value , sharpness, relationship with other textures and background, assigning hierarchy can become very difficult. We will discuss texture in terms of tonal value, so when referring to color in this section, it too will be examined for its tonal value as a texture itself.

Europe at war
This map records territorial changes in Europe during WWII. The scale-key defines ten different "textures" when we consider color. If we look at tonal values only there are four, making it difficult to distinguish between the variables with similar textural patterns and different color. In addition to the defined textured variables, the text on the map becomes a texture as well adding a new level of complexity to the image.

Pantheon
This image records physical characteristics of a building, interior details as well as exteriors ones. The use of textures to communicate tonal values is very effective and consistent, there is no scale-bar of variables, but the conventions for materials space, volume and scale used on this representation are consistent with an architect's understanding of them.