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Graphic books, as a new type of multifunctional leisure books, have diversified layout design and graphic configuration forms, and can be presented in both pictures and cartoons. They are extremely popular to readers in modern times. Takagi Naoko, a popular Japanese illustrator and graphic writer, has always been quite popular with readers in Taiwan, and her graphic books gain a dominance in Taiwan's market. At present, Takagi Naoko, who has published 31 graphic books in Taiwan, often uses “an individual” as the starting point to tell her own various experiences, and is good at presenting interesting daily life, travel experiences, hobby cultivation, and stories on friendships and the family. However, for research on Takagi Naoko’s popular graphic books, there is still a lack of comprehensive study on the visual communication based on the layout designs.
Through focus group and content analysis, this study used Takagi Naoko's graphic books as the research target, and deeply discussed each individual layout design feature and orientation of the covers and inner pages. After research, it was found that Takagi Naoko's graphic book cover layout designs and features could be comprehensively summarized into three styles, including an urban life appearance, a simple decoration of emphasizing theme, and a broad landscape appearance. However, the layout designs and features of the inner pages of Takagi Naoko's graphic books could be comprehensively summarized into five styles, including cartoon format of single-line grid, cartoon format of spacing grid, free graffiti style, single-page cartoon illustration, and expanded content with information. Each style layout of the covers and inner pages could be applied correspondingly to different themes, in which the configuration of various layout design elements helped to convey the cultural meaning of individual themes, and made it easier for readers to resonate with the concept and aesthetic feeling presented in the graphic books when reading Takagi Naoko's graphic books.
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