Visual Design Reuse through Style Recognition and Transfer

Abstract

This work aims to transfer design attributes and styles within and across visual documents such as slides, graphic designs, and non-photorealistic renderings. Consistent style across elements is a hallmark of good graphic design. Many visual stylistic design patterns exist throughout visualizations, presentations, and interactive media experiences (games, visual novels). These patterns often exist in visual style guides, brand guides, and concept art. However, except for structured document layouts (e.g., HTML/CSS), design tools often do not enforce consistent style decisions or must be manually maintained. Synchronizing style guides and designs require significant effort, discouraging exploration and the mixing of new ideas. This work introduces algorithms that recognize implicit patterns and structures in visual documents along with interfaces that let designers operate on these patterns, specifically, to view and apply design changes across pattern instances flexibly. The key benefits of visual redesign through implicit patterns are: (1) removing any dependence on upfront formal style declarations, (2) enabling extraction and distribution of implicit visual patterns, and (3) facilitating the exploration of novel visual design concepts through the mixing of styles.