Elements & Principles of Design - The Long List

Lecture Notes

Design can be thought of as a “visual language”.  The Elements and Principles of design were created to help form this language.  Traditionally they are thought of in terms of two-dimensional design, but they also apply to three-dimensional design.  And, until you start working with 3-D projected virtual reality, you are ultimately creating a 2-D experience for the viewer (rendered movie, web page, or game display screen).

Elements of Design: Line, Shape, Form, Space, Value, Color & Texture
Principles of Design: Contrast, Unity; Dominance, Balance; Pattern, Movement, Rhythm

Elements

The “visual vocabulary” used to express contrast, rhythm, unity, emphasis, pattern, balance, and movement. Good or bad - all designs will contain most (if not all) of the seven elements of design. 

Line

• Actual = mark made by a tool -- contour lines, hatching and cross-hatching;
• Perceptual = doesn’t really exist -- gesture lines, implied lines, implied direction, and expressive lines.
  • Edge = imaginary lines around the boundaries of any 2D object
    • Shadows are edges
    • Color & Tonal changes are edges
  • Contour
    • Circle outline around basket ball
    • Square outline around TV set
    • Triangle outline around roof
    • Where the river meets the bank
  • Closure = natural tendency to connect primary points
    • Unconnected dots
    • Heads of figures
    • Line of sight (What is he looking at?)
  • Intersection of planes: corner in a room; building on a street
  • Imitation through distance: large steel beams, tree trunk & branches, and telephone poles all appear thin enough to imitate a line when viewed from a distance
  • Axis = invisible line that runs through an object
    • Standing person has vertical axis
    • Reclining person has horizontal axis
    • Squares or round objects don’t have axes
  • Track = path of a moving object;
    • Actual = tire tracks left in the dirt; skier’s tracks in snow; smoke left by sky writing airplane (imitation of line)
    • Virtual = implied line created with movement – butterfly flight path, thrown baseball;
• Linear Motif – the basic lines that make up the picture or shot
  • Line requires tonal or color contrast.  Increasing the contrast reveals the linear motif.  When contrast is taken away, the lines disappear.
  • Motif can be circular, straight, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or a combination
• Line Quality:
  • Linear (straight) = direct, aggressive, bland, honest, industrial, ordered, strong, unnatural, adult, and rigid.
  • Curvilinear (curved) = indirect, passive, pertaining to nature, childlike, romantic, soft, organic, safe, and flexible.
  • Affinity = all same (all straight or all curved) [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
  • Contrast = mix (straight & curved together); increased visual intensity [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
• Line Direction = angle of the line created by the track of moving objects. 
  • There are 8 directions – Up (North), Diagonal Up-Right (North-East), Right (East), Diagonal Down-Right (South-East), Down (South), Diagonal Down-Left (South-West), Left (West), Diagonal Up-Left (North-West).
  • Affinity = 2 objects moving in same direction [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
  • Contrast = 2 objects moving perpendicular to each other (horizontal/vertical); 2 objects moving parallel, but in opposite directions [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
• Line Orientation = direction of static lines
  • Affinity = Horizontal parallel lines are the least dynamic or intense; Diagonal parallel lines are the most intense [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
  • Contrast = Horizontal perpendicular lines (+) are the least dynamic or intense; Diagonal perpendicular lines (x) are the most intense [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
• Controlling Line
  • Since line exists because of tonal or color contrasts, you can control line through art direction (tone and color choices in both the sets & costumes) & lighting (key to fill ratio, light intensity, and light color)
  • Incorporate specific emotional ideas about line into your set by picking a linear motif (curved, straight, horizontal, or diagonal).  Use and emphasize horizontal lines to reduce visual intensity, and diagonal lines to increase visual intensity
  • Find the orientation (static direction) of the lines in each shot in your storyboard.  When you are staging an action sequence, a title sequence, a dance, or a conversation, know that the lines in the shot will add contrast or affinity to the sequence.  Use that knowledge to orchestrate the intensity changes of the scene.

Shape (2D)

• Shape is an area that is contained within implied line, or is seen and identified because of color or value changes.  Shapes have two dimensions, length and width, and can be geometric or organic.
• Basic Shapes = Basic shapes (2D) and forms (3D) are objects that reveal their basic properties no matter what the viewing angle. There are 3 basic Shapes (2D):
  • Circle
  • Square
  • Equilateral triangle
• Basic Shape Recognition – Reduce the object to a silhouette and see which of the 3 shape categories it falls into. Shapes can also be seen in light patterns and negative shapes (shapes formed by the spaces between other shapes)
• Symbolic & Abstract Shapes – Symbolic shapes have an associated meaning tied to them. Abstract shapes are shapes that lack any figurative meaning. In abstract or nonobjective art, positive shapes are usually central or featured elements; negative shapes surround them. Abstraction often reduces things to their simplest shapes.
• Emotional Associations
  • Rounded (Circle/Sphere – curvilinear lines) = indirect, passive, romantic, organic, soft, childlike, safe
  • Boxy (Square/Cube – Horizontal & vertical lines) = direct, industrial, ordered, linear, mechanical, adult, rigid
  • Angular (Triangle/Pyramid – Diagonal lines) = aggressive, dymaic
  • Affinity – All the objects can be reduced to the same basic shape [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
  • Contrast – Rounded & angular have greatest contrast [within same shot, or from shot to shot]
• Controlling Shape
  • Look at the silhouette, not the object itself, and find it’s basic shape
  • Actors – What is the basic shape of each actor?
  • Location or set – What is the basic shape of the space you’re working with?
  • Set dressing & props – On the set, what is the basic shape of a chair, a couch, or a lamp?  Do the shapes communicate the correct emotional mood?

Form (3D shapes)

• Form describes volume and mass, or the three dimensional aspects of objects that take up space.
• Basic Forms = Basic shapes (2D) and forms (3D) are objects that reveal their basic properties no matter what the viewing angle. There are 3 basic Forms (3D Shapes):
  • Sphere
  • Cube
  • 3 Sided, Equilateral Pyramid
• Emotional Associations (same as listed under “Shape”)
• Forms can and should be viewed from any angles. When you hold a baseball, shoe, or small sculpture, you are aware of their curves, angles, indentations, extensions, and edges---their forms.
• Architectural forms usually contain enclosed spaces and most are geometric forms, but some architects use curvilinear forms in their building designs. Rocks, trees, mountains, flowers, animals and people are examples of actual forms. Sculpture can have a geometric form (blockish, cubistic, and straight-edged), or an organic form (rounded, flowing, and undulating).

Space: Actual space is three-dimensional volume that can be empty or filled with objects. It has width, height, and depth. Space that appears three-dimensional in a two-dimensional painting is an illusion that creates a feeling of actual depth. Various techniques can be used to emphasize visual depth (AKA “deep” space) or de-emphasize visual depth (AKA “flat” space).

• FLAT (2D)
• DEEP (3D)
• Sculpture, architecture, and various craft pieces occupy actual or real space. You are aware of actual space in a large room or in an open landscape. If objects or people overlap in a painting, we sense space between them. If overlapping is combined with size differences, the sense of space is greatly increased.
• Linear space is a way of organizing objects in space. One-point perspective is used if the artist is looking along a street or directly at the side of an object. Two-point perspective is used when looking directly at the front corner of a box, building, automobile, or other form. Combining two-point perspective with light and shadow greatly increases the sense of space.
• Aerial perspective is a way of using color or value (or both) to show space or depth. Distant elements appear lighter in value, have less details, and less intense colors.

Value: high key and low-key paintings, value contrasts, graded values, and values in atmospheric perspective.

• Value refers to the amount and spread of light and dark within an image.  Contrasting values helps define line, shape, form and space within an image.  The type on this page can be easily read because of the contrast between the black letters and white paper.
• Value contrast is also evident within the inherent value of color. Some pure colors are light in value; other pure hues are dark in value. High key painting are made mostly of light values and contain a minimum of value contrast. Light values often suggest happiness, light, joy, and airiness. Low key paintings use dark valued hues and contain little value contrast. Dark values suggest sadness, depression, loneliness, and sometimes mystery. To make value changes in a color, add white to make it lighter and black to make it darker.
• Value changes help us "feel" the shape of an object by showing us how light illuminates these forms and creates shadows on them. The entire object may be the same color but varying amounts of light give it different values. Remember that value describes form; value creates a focal area or center of interest; and value defines space.

Color

• Vocabulary
  • Primary and secondary colors
  • Complimentary and analogous colors
  • Warm and cool
  • Saturated and desaturated/neutral colors
  • Value, hue, saturation/intensity
  • Subtractive and Additive color

• Light -- Additive Color
  • All color is light because it is made of light -- either projected directly into your eye (candle flame, monitor screen), or bounced off a surface (tabletop, mirrow, fur coat).
  • There must be light for us to see color. A red shirt will not look red in the dark where there is no light.
  • The whiter the light, the more true the colors will be. A yellow light on a full color painting will change the appearance of all the colors.
  • A ray of white light passing through a prism separates into the hues seen in a rainbow
• Pigment -- Subtractive Color
  • Surfaces absorb some light, and reflect back the rest. A red shirt absorbs all the light except red, which it reflects back into your eye. When you work with PIGMENT, you are painting with color that absorbs, or takes away, light. A black shirt or asphalt street is hot because it absorbs all the light, reflecting back nothing.

Color has three properties...

• HUE -- the name of the colors. The primary hues are yellow, red, and blue. Secondary colors are made by mixing two primaries. Intermediate colors are mixtures of a primary and adjacent secondary color.
• SATURATION (aka intensity) -- the purity of the hue (also called "chroma").
• VALUE -- the lightness or darkness of hue.

Color Wheel

• Primary colors --3 main colors that all colors are made from Working with LIGHT, they are Red, Green, Blue. When you add all 3 you get WHITE LIGHT
• Secondary colors -- created from combining two primary colors. Working with LIGHT, when you put two lights together, you get a brighter light. Therefore the secondary colors are BRIGHTER than the primary colors. They are Yellow (Red+Green), Cyan (Green+Blue), Magenta (Blue+Red)
• Complimentary colors -- are opposite colors. Working with LIGHT, the compliment of Red = Green+Blue (Cyan)
• Analgous colors --
• Warm colors -- from yellow to red to red-violet on the color wheel. In a painting, they seem to advance or come forward.
• Cool colors -- from yellow-green through violet. In a painting, they seem to recede, or go back in space.
• Neutral colors -- made by adding a complementary color (opposite on the color wheel) to a hue. Neutralized hues are often called "tones".

Texture

• Includes actual and simulated texture, and textures in fabric, wood, metal, and nature.
• Sharp focus = Distinct details & well defined; Soft focus = indistinct details & blurry

Principles

The “visual grammar” used to create strong visual language.

CONTRAST (differences)

Expressing DIFFERENCE through line (straight | curved), line (thick | thin), line (broken | continuous), shape (round | angular), form (soft | pokey), space (deep | flat), value (light | dark), color saturation (intense | subdued) color hue (red-warm | blue-cool), texture (smooth-simple | rough-complex)

Contrasting Color-Hue blue room | red trim; Cool | Warm	Contrasting Color-Hue blue room | red trim; Cool | Warm	Contrasting Color-Hue blue room | red trim; Cool | Warm
Contrasting Color-Saturation low, subdued blue | high, intense red	Unity in Color-Saturation low, subdued blue and red	Unity in Color-Saturation high, intense blue & red
Contrasting Value light room | dark trim Values sit FAR appart within a grayscale	Unity in Value light room & light trim Values sit CLOSE within a grayscale	Unity in Value dark room & dark trim Values sit CLOSE within a grayscale

Unity (sameness)

Expressing SAMENESS through line (curved | curved), line (thick | thick), line (broken | broken), shape (round | round), form (soft | soft), space (deep | deep), value (light | light), color saturation (intense | subdued) color hue (red-warm | red-warm), texture (smooth-simple | smooth-simple)

Unity in Color-Hue blue room | blue trim; Cool | Cool	Unity in Color-Hue cyan room | blue trim (Analgous); Cool | Cool	Unity in Color-Hue cyan room | blue trim (Analgous); Cool | Cool
Unity in Color-Saturation low, subdued blue room | low, subdued blue trim	Unity in Color-Saturation high, intense cyan room | high, intense blue trim	Contrasting Color-Saturation low, subdued cyan room | high, intense blue trim
Unity in Value light room & light trim Values sit CLOSE within a grayscale	Contrasting Value light room | dark trim Values sit FAR appart within a grayscale	Contrasting Value light room | dark trim Values sit FAR appart within a grayscale

Dominance

• Artists use emphasis to create dominance and focus in their work. Artists can emphasize color, value, shapes, or other art elements to achieve dominance. Various kinds of contrast can be used to emphasize a center of interest.
• An artist often uses focal areas (centers of interest) to place emphasis on the most important aspects of a work. The best placement for a focal area is a location off center about one-third from top or bottom.

• Color dominance is a way of emphasizing a color or color family in painting. Visual emphasis on a focal area can be achieved by having the strongest light and dark value contrasts in the painting located in a desirable place. Visual emphasis in a painting is enhanced when value passages (light or dark movements) lead to a focal area. Such visual movement places emphasis on the focal area in a work.
• In nature, emphasis might be felt when elements are isolated, such as a tree or an animal. Emphasis is usually on the element that is different. A person in a landscape becomes the focus or visual emphasis of a photograph. Using shape contrast can develop visual emphasis at a center of interest.

Balance

• Balance refers to the distribution of visual weight in a work of art. In painting, it is the visual equilibrium of the elements that causes the total image to appear balanced. Balance can be either symmetrical or asymmetrical in a work of art.
• When elements on both sides of a central vertical line appear to be about equal in shape, weight, value, and color the design is in symmetrical balance. Other terms for symmetrical balance are formal or classical balance.
• Asymmetrical balance involves two sides that are different but yet are in visual balance. For example a large three figure shape of people sitting quietly is balanced by smaller but much more active birds. Another term for asymmetrical balance is in formal balance.
• Value balance is essential to good painting or drawing. On a medium background a small light value shape seems to balance a large middle value shape. Color balances the same way: a small intense color shape balances a much neutral color shape.
• Radial balance happens when all the elements radiate out from a central point. If the focus is at the center it is also in symmetrical balance. A grapefruit cut in half is a good example.
• A small irregular shape will balance a larger circular rectangular or simple even if it is of the same color value or texture. The smaller shape is more interesting and therefore has more visual weight.

Pattern

• Planned or random repetitions of colors, lines, values, and textures to create patterns.
• Pattern uses the art elements in planned or random repetition to enhance surfaces or paintings or sculptures. Patterns often occur in nature, and artists use similar repeated motifs to create pattern in their work. Pattern increases visual excitement by enriching surface interest.
• Fabrics often have regular or planned patterns, because certain elements are repeated with accuracy (lines, shapes, swirls, or other design elements).
• Planned patterned are used by architects to create surface interest on buildings. Repeated shapes for windows, doors, ledges, and architectural details are used to develop patterns.
• Patterns in nature surrounded us constantly: repeated leaves, flowers, grass, shells, and many others. The radial pattern in many fruits and vegetables cannot be noticed by cutting them in half.
• Some painters use pattern to organize surface elements. For example, a regular pattern of squares is made more interesting with an irregular pattern of another shape within them.
• Patterns made of repeated lines, shapes, colors, textures are used by designers of such things as jewelry, ceramics, weavings, wall covering, fabrics, carpet, and flooring.

Movement

Movement is generally considered VISUAL DIRECTION as it relates to the edges of the 2D view frame (can be either the computer, tv, or movie screen). It can also include the 3rd dimension (3D) of SCREEN DEPTH and break the view plane by coming into or out of the screen.

In this subject it is possible to impose either a horizontal, vertical or oblique direction. The drawings below show the effect of different treatments
A horizontal composition tends to make the buildings look solid and clean and creates a fairly static atmosphere.	A diagonal composition creates more movement and reinforces the chaotic way these buildings were thrown together.		Emphasizing a vertical direction creates a solid feeling but maintains the random chaos between the lines

• Artists use visual movement to direct viewers through their work, often to focal areas. Such movement can be directed along lines, edges, shapes, and colors within the works, but moves the eye most easily on paths of equal value.
• An artist may move our eyes through a painting by providing visual passage or linkage on dark or light values. Visual movement usually leads to a focal area.
• Our eyes move into a painting if the work contains one-point perspective. We are drawn into the background from the foreground. Such visual movement can be very strong.
• Elongated shapes cause our eyes to move along them. If there is a strong center of interest, our eyes will be drawn to it like magnet. Linear movement can be both direct (straight) and irregular (curvilinear). Our eyes follow lines and edges in sculpture, architecture, and paintings, as well as in nature.
• As lines and shapes move our eyes across a surface, interruptions may occur. Our eyes skip across these interruptions in a process called closure.

Rhythm

• Rhythm is the regular, irregular, and progressive sequences of the elements (lines, shapes, forms, spaces, values, colors, and textures) to create visual movement Variety is essential to keep rhythms exciting and active, and to avoid monotony. Movement and rhythm work together creating the visual equivalent of a musical beat.
• Regular rhythm is the repetition of elements that are the same or nearly the same in regular sequences. In nature, a row of evenly spaced trees or rock strata creates regular rhythm. Plants spaced unevenly create irregular rhythms. Irregular rhythms might repeat throughout a painting without any exact duplication.
• Staccato rhythms are repetitions that are abrupt and that change frequently. They often seem to be short bursts of energy in a painting.
• Progressive rhythms are those in which the elements change sizes as they progress or move across space. This is seen in looking at buildings or fence in perspective. The windows and architectural elements are the same size but diminish as they progress into space.
• In architecture, rhythm sequences of windows, columns, and other architecture details are used to unify large surfaces.

This information was provided by Crystal Production Co.  It comes from The Elements & Principles of Design Posters (and Video tapes) Teacher’s Guide.  Glenview, IL. Copyright 1996
http://www.crystalproductions.com/

Illustration were provided by John Lovett’s Design & Color lesson
http://www.johnlovett.com/test.htm

Some of the information in these notes was compiled from Bruce Block’s “The Visual Narrative”

“Having taken Bruce Block's visual expression class while getting my MFA at USC Film School, I can highly recommend this book. It's one of the few classes I took in film school that has had any lasting value. It should be part of any filmmaker’s foundation.”

Bruce Block (USC Adjunct Faculty)

A long-time filmic consultant, producer, and second unit director. Most recent co-producer credits include AMERICA’S SWEETHEART, WHAT WOMEN WANT, THE PARENT TRAP, FATHER OF THE BRIDE II, and sole producer of BABY BOOM. Was creative consultant for STUART LITTLE, and filmic consultant for AS GOOD AS IT GETS, THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE, THE GREAT OUTDOORS, and SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. He is a visual consultant to animation studios. Recently wrote The Visual Story, a book about the relationship between story structure and visual structure.
 

A SIMPLE APPROACH TO GOOD DESIGN

Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! Cut out the junk that can complicate your composition. Eliminate anything that doesn’t express your feelings simply and clearly. Subordinate, combine, delete.

Notes provided by -- http://www.makart.com/resources/artclass/simple.html