Elements Definitions

1. BALANCE – Balance in design is similar to balance in physics. A large shape close to the center can be balanced by a small shape close to the edge. Balance provides stability and structure to a design. It’s the weight distributed in the design by the placement of your elements.
2. PROXIMITY – Proximity creates relationship between elements. It provides a focal point. Proximity doesn’t mean that elements have to be placed together, it means they should be visually connected in someway.
3. ALIGNMENT – Allows us to create order and organisation. Aligning elements allows them to create a visual connection with each other.
4. REPETITION – Repetition strengthens a design by tying together individual elements. It helps to create association and consistency. Repetition can create rhythm (a feeling of organized movement).
5. CONTRAST – Contrast is the juxtaposition of opposing elements (opposite colours on the colour wheel, or value light / dark, or direction – horizontal / vertical). Contrast allows us to emphasize or highlight key elements in your design.
6. SPACE – Space in art refers to the distance or area between, around, above, below, or within elements. Both positive and negative space are important factors to be considered in every design.

Elements of Design

In design there are many elements that you can incorporate into your work. There are simple and basic ones like line, shape, color, texture, and space. There are also some complicated ones like unity, balance, hierarchy, and emphasis.

Line, shape, color, texture, and space are all very simple design terms. They all describe something about the image you have designed.  A line is a part of what you have created. Shape and color describe what is in your design. Texture is how something looks or feels in a design. Space is what you have left empty to work for your image.

Unity, balance, hierarchy, and emphasis have tricky meanings to them. Unity is when the whole design comes together and looks unified and complete. Balance is when you have not too much of one thing on the same design. (Remember from last post that repetition is good but in this case you want to have balance as well.) Hierarchy is how your eyes read a design. There is a certain way in which your brain tells your eyes to see it and the visual itself can help to determine what to look at first.  Emphasis is rather simple it is just whatever you have focused on.

Design Tips

When you start designing whatever it is you are making, whether it be an ad or a poster you must always follow several rules that come with designing. There are several ways to make a design truly great and these rules help you to get on your way.
1. Use Contrast
2. Use Repetition of patterns ,colors, etc.
3. Mess around with the alignment of words and phrases
4. Use proximity to simulate unity in your design
These rules help you become a graphic designer and are very important. Even of you are just starting out and like to throw things on a page until they look orderly, try to make them unified as one using these simple techniques.

A Brief History

 The evolution of graphic design has been affected mainly by technological advancements. Graphic design has been practiced by many people over the centuries. Dating back to manuscripts in ancient china Egypt and Greece. As printing and book production developed in the 15th century, advances in graphic design developed alongside it over subsequent centuries, with compositors or typesetters often designing pages as they set the type.

In the late 19th century, graphic design emerged as a distinct profession in the West, in part because of the job specialization process that occurred there, and in part because of the new technologies and commercial possibilities brought about by the Industrial Revolution. New production methods led to the separation of the design of a communication medium from its actual production. Increasingly, over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, advertising agencies, book publishers, and magazines hired art directors who organized all visual elements of the communication and brought them into a harmonious whole, creating an expression appropriate to the content. In 1922 typographer William Dwiggins coined the term graphic design to identify the emerging field.

Throughout the 20th century, the technology available to designers continued to advance rapidly, as did the artistic and commercial possibilities for design. The profession expanded enormously, and graphic designers created, among other things, magazine pages, book jackets, posters, compact-disc covers, postage stamps, packaging, trademarks, signs, advertisements, kinetic titles for television programs and motion pictures, and Web sites. By the turn of the 21st century, graphic design has become a global profession, as advanced technology and industry spread throughout the world.