Wildlife Decor

The crop decides what registers from a distance

A whole animal has to shrink to fit inside the rectangle, which means the head shrinks with it, and the head is carrying all of the recognition. From the far end of a path the design resolves as a shape and a color, and only becomes a specific animal once somebody is standing over it. A portrait crop inverts that. The eyes are large enough to land from the gate, and the mat registers as an image instead of a texture. Neither is the better choice on its own; they are answers to different approach distances.

• Long approach, portrait crop. A driveway or a deep front path gives a head and shoulders design the room it needs to work.
• Short approach, full body. On a landing where visitors arrive right at the door, the whole animal is readable straight away.
• Test it on one animal. The same cheetah drawn walking and drawn as a portrait reads completely differently, and set side by side the rule stops being theoretical.

Marked coats against shaped coats

The second split is the coat itself. Leopard and cheetah carry a pattern that stays legible at any size and under a layer of dust, because spots do not depend on scale to be understood. Panda, moose and gorilla work on silhouette and hard contrast instead, which is a stronger effect from the street and a plainer one close up. Camel, llama and koala fall in between, with soft mid tone coats that put an animal at the door without putting a graphic there.

• Spots survive neglect. A leopard still reads as a leopard when the mat is overdue a shake out.
• High contrast carries the doorway. Panda and moose register as blocks of dark and light well before the detail arrives.
• Mid tone coats are the restrained option. Camel, llama and koala add a subject without adding a pattern to the entry.

Why these are floors and not seats

Wildlife subjects tend to be large bodied. A moose, a camel or a gorilla reduced to a small square keeps its outline and loses everything else, and a rectangle a couple of feet across is the smallest shape that lets a big animal stay big. That is also why big animals suit a wider mat, and why a narrower mat behaves less like a smaller version and more like a closer one.

• Big subjects want the wide format. A 24x36 mat gives the animal space around it.
• The narrow size zooms in. At 18x27 the animal fills more of the frame and the background largely disappears.
• The door still comes first. Whichever animal wins, the size you can actually use is decided by the door rather than by the artwork.

Which way the animal should face

An animal design puts a face at your threshold, and the direction it points deserves a moment of thought before the mat goes down. Laid one way a portrait meets whoever is walking up to the house. Turned around it meets the household on the way out, which some people prefer and most people do not intend. Full body designs generally look settled with the animal traveling across the opening rather than walking into the door.

• Point a portrait at the traffic. The face should be the right way up for the person arriving, not for the person leaving.
• Let a walking animal cross the doorway. Movement reads better along the threshold than into it.
• After that it is simply a printed surface. Wear, placement and cleaning are identical for every design, and the printed door mat guide sets them out.