Chapter 8
Howling at the Moon
Read Time:
Fast / Skim Reader: 6 Minutes 28 Seconds
Average / Steady Reader: 8 Minutes 6 Seconds
Slow / Deep Comprehension Reader 10 Minutes 48 Seconds
Chapter Prologue
When I wrote the last (pre 2026) version of the following chapter we had been working for around 4 years in and around schools and the Leadership Teams who wanted to discuss at length what we were doing, how we were doing it and the Design Psychology that went into everything we created for them.
“The Theory of Up” was one of the aspects I would bring up during many school management meetings. It was a concept I had developed from quite a young age; as a junior draftsman in an architect’s office learning about Desire Lines from Chris. Then atop a 30ft scaffold as a teenage trainee sign writer, with old Roger (Pints at lunch time, one eye constantly closed against the perpetual unfiltered fag hanging from the corner of his mouth while talking, smoking and using both hands for hand rest and brush, leaving me to hold the paint pot and straight edge when not painting in the space between his outlines. We discussed cabbages and kings and the contrast between the stark outlines of the industrial buildings surrounding us with the not so far away hills and rolling horizons beyond.
I used the theory in location brand meetings with Kaplan (UK) between 2007 and 2024.
Being in “that London” I always had time to kill before the train back up North.
At St Pancras I had the time to randomly buy into the story telling of Conn Iggulden, quickly becoming a huge fan (another story). While on another visit I found myself emerging from Baker Street Underground on a dank, miserable day to see nothing but blocks of buildings stretching down either side of the road – no horizon, no close or even far away hills to break the monotony.
Instantly homesick and feeling strangely stressed, the theory was given more weight.
In 2013, I had added a layer of research into the most ancient part of the human brain to bolster what was bursting to get out of mine, and this is what emerged.
It first appeared in the articles section of our company website between 2019 and 2022 and it feels appropriate to republish now as it seems real designers are talking about Foveal Views and Contour Bias again – as a creative explanation of how we are being dragged (not exactly kicking and screaming) back to humanity by, ironically, working with Bento Box Architecture and Long Copy to attract AI search engines.
You will probably see the link between the latest 2026 “tech” hype, and this 9-year-old article, with an origin story 50 years in the making.
There truly is nothing new.
Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss further.
………………………………………..
Origin stories:
The Theory of Up!
“Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up?” Asked the Mary Poppins actress Julie Andrews; perhaps referring to how no one, but her filmic wards, watched her character arrive at the Banks family home.
“Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings.
Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn’t notice.”
She wasn’t alone in this observation. Robert Baden-Powell the founder of the Scouting movement for boys had given a positive use for this “fact” years before:
“If you need to hide, hide in a tree, no one ever looks up”
I’m paraphrasing from memory of what the great man wrote – illustrated by a between the wars ink drawing of a plucky young scout complete with woggle, looking down through oak leaves to where two men with rifles and WWI Kaiser style helmets searched beneath – without discovering the brave lad.
Before we become pedants and start counting how many things we look up at – don’t do that, you’ll spoil the story – there are fine reasons to keep in mind “The Theory of UP!”
Humans are predators.
Not only do we not look up very often, at least not since Pterodactyls stopped being a worry, but we don’t look behind very often either, (Leading to the “Theory of Gone” but that’s also another story).
While visiting out of town shopping malls, you may think you have looked up at shop fascias – those bright global brand signs – but most likely you haven’t.
You were looking across at them, not “up”.
Plane in the sky? Only if you are laid on your back on the beach, or your head doesn’t need to tip back more than 10 degrees (you are not a penguin, you naturally avoid not tipping over backwards).
You look across not up.
You can walk the length of a high street, not seeing a single store front sign on your side of the road – then get run over – like the magpie you are; drawn in by the shiny logo on the other side.
The logo you looked across at, not up to.
We are predators, not prey, we don’t look behind or up.
We are programmed to look for prey (the latest shoes), danger (charity tin shaker), and protection (against anything we might bump into or anything we might step in) coming from the front or below.
We look across, we look forward, we look down – we don’t look up.
Got it now?
So Mary / Julie wasn’t wrong, neither was Baden Powell. But you are, if you keep counting how many times you look up (stop it).
When we design signage for buildings, or displays in schools, shop fronts in malls or on high streets, we use this human characteristic to inform the design.
Can the target audience look across to the location of the proposed brand image or information? From what vantage point are they most likely to see it? If they are directly under the sign, not looking up, what do we put in front of them? Do we need to install something else that is on an obvious eye line, which will then draw the customer’s eye to the display or message we want them to see.
A Graphic Designers Eye Line is the equivalent of an Architect’s Desire Line – just using eyes instead of feet.
When the plans for landscaping around a building are drawn up, the good architect, or rare and occasionally thoughtful town planner, will study the approach the public might take to or around the building and let that inform pedestrian routes and wayfinding.
If this isn’t thought through the “Desire Line” – that path – worn in the turf covered open space, will always indicate the shortest route people naturally want to go.
That is where the actual path should have been planned – or hard objects put in place to force people (ignorant of the architects great vision), to go the way they are told to go!
In the same way, your eye follows the line it knows to be right: Along an undeveloped river, across the far horizon, following the line of a bird’s flight.
It is actually how we manage to drive at faster than walking speed – our eyes naturally adjust to the line and flow of the road ahead – not what is immediately in front of the car.
The Limbic Brain, that oldest part of our grey matter, which evolved before we were capable of speech, communicates to the other hemispheres of our brain and neurosensory hard drives, through emotion. Those things that we can’t explain but we say, “It feels right” or “I’m not happy about that” often with no logical or pragmatic reasoning to back it up.
This part, of the amazing machine we carry around on our shoulders, has recorded memories and experiences going back millions of years and passed them down through the generations in our DNA; telling us as children that sweet tastes are good for us, while sour tastes may be harmful. To always look forward, across and down, and to get out of the way when a wooly mammoth is crossing the tundra.
It also tells you the way something should look: Flowing, simple, the way things grow and evolve. Anything that doesn’t, it tells us, should not be there.
If the eye line along a row of neat human scale buildings is suddenly interrupted, by a Brutalist concrete slab of a tower block, your sub-conscious doesn’t like it; it tells you something is wrong, it makes your mind uncomfortable.
Ever been stressed by a day in the city with all its right angles and boxes and sharp corners? It’s because the shapes and comparative scales never appear in nature.
Then you go to the coast or the country, and the blood pressure stops thundering in your ears and all is well? It’s because nothing is interrupting the lines that your Limbic brain is telling your eyes to follow.
Knowing this to be the case, as designers, we can use both sides of what the Limbic brain is warning our audience of to our advantage.
We can make places and spaces that allow “good” feelings; comfortable, unstressed – opening minds to suggestion – but we can also use those “bad” feelings; discomfort, intrigue, excitement, adrenaline rushes (however minor) to force the viewer to look where we want them to look – even UP!
The natural “line interrupted” may make us subconsciously uncomfortable, but also draws the eye in another direction – put simply; if the vantage point of the viewer hides or disguises the site of a sign or message, (which you can put nowhere else), then find a location in the natural eye line, take the eyes of the audience along it, and force the Limbic brain to make them look where you want them to look.
There is more to design than pretty pictures.
Whenever we work with a client who needs to attract and hold attention, through physical media such as signage, large format displays or “Brand Infused Art” this “Theory of Up!” is where we start.
* And yes of course – as “predators” we do look up – when howling at the Moon!
Stop it!
©2017 Blue Strawberry Elephant Ltd
