Dot (review)

Ever stop to consider what an expressive, malleable entity a dot can be? Graphic designer Intriago opens with an interplay of colors, simple lines, and dots that lays out some familiar conventions in contrasting pairs. A red dot is a “stop dot,” and a green dot is a “go dot”; speed lines imply a “fast dot” while a dashed line follows the trajectory of a bouncing dot. Then things get a little more surprising. A large wedge carved from a dot suggests a “loud” mouth while a little notch on a facing dot seems to be “quiet.” Scalloped toothmarks along the hollowed-out edge of a dot indicate it was “yummy,” but the missing chunk that appears to have been spit out along side its counterpart evidently “tastes bad.” The featured pairs float elegantly on clean white space, sometimes touched with a dab of color for requisite highlighting. The entries are clever or thought-provoking, and though Intriago pushes the envelope a page too far in a bland bedtime-story conclusion, the lovely penultimate spread that displays discrete white dots clustering ever more densely into a field of pure white makes a striking substitute conclusion. Kids will prefer to be wide awake to try out their own pencil and crayon explorations on the possibilities of the humble dot.