Vignette (graphic design)

A vignette, in graphic design, is a unique form for a frame to an image, either illustration or photograph. Rather than the image's edges being rectilinear, it is overlaid with decorative artwork featuring a unique outline. This is similar to the use of the word in photography, where the edges of an image that has been vignetted are non-linear or sometimes softened with a mask - often a darkroom process of introducing a screen. An oval vignette is probably the most common example.

Originally a vignette was a design of vine-leaves and tendrils ('vignette'=small vine). The term was also used for a small embellishment without border, in what otherwise would have been a blank space, such as that found on a title-page, a headpiece or tailpiece.

The use in modern graphic design is derived from book publishing techniques dating back to the Middle Ages Analytical Bibliography (ca. 1450 to 1800) when a vignette referred to an engraved design printed using a copper-plate press, on a page that has already been printed on using a letter press (Printing press). Vignettes are sometimes distinguished from other in-text illustrations printed on a copper-plate press by the fact that they do not have a border; such designs usually appear on title-pages only.

Woodcuts, which are printed on a letterpress and are also used to separate sections or chapters are identified as a headpiece, tailpiece or printer's ornament, depending on shape and position.

Cellphone, Picasa, Photoshop, and other modern software apps and devices possess photo-manipulating functions which have the capability of editing images to create vignettes of varying styles and degrees of size and color.

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