Consistency

Consistency

Unity is the goal of all designers. The parts of the letter and especially the decorative strokes should be the same or compatible in style.

What if Stop signs came in pink squares, yellow circles, or green triangles, depending on the changing whims of a town and a few of its residents? Imagine the ensuing traffic jams and accidents. Repeating design elements and consistent use of type and graphics styles within a document shows a reader where to go and helps them navigate safely.

If there was no consistency in our world we could all interpret anything however we wanted to.

Readers gain comfort from having certain elements repeat themselves at consistent intervals or in the same position. It is much easier to flip to the desired page of a magazine if the reader knows that the page number will be in the same location on every page. Specific columns or special sections of a newspaper are more readily recognized, even when they change location, if they look the same from issue to issue.

Readers expect to find page numbers in the same location on each page. When all the text in a given article — even when it spans several pages — has a consistent look, including column width, it enhances readability. Readers often expect to find sidebars, informational text, and other oft-repeated elements in the same place from page to page.

A grid, used consistently on all pages of a multi-page document, makes it easier for the designer to provide the consistent look that readers often expect. A carefully conceived grid system also allows the designer to introduce variations without forsaking readability or consistency. It also speeds layout because it takes the guesswork and "look back to see what we did before" out of where to place elements from one page to the next.

Layout - Balance

BALANCE
Balance is a skill that everyone uses almost all of their waking hours. It is balance that allows you to stand up and walk around. You balance your checkbook and hopefully find a balance between your academic and social life.

Balance in design is similar to these kinds of balance. You have already had to balance between unity and variety, and in the last project balance figure and ground. Your physical sense of balance will play a part in your ability to balance the visual information in a composition.

Visual interest is what you balance in design. Different colors, shapes sizes, etc. create different degrees of interest. It is the distribution of this interest that you need to control. We will study the abstract aspects of balance to make it easier to understand how balance works. Subject matter changes the situation because different objects can call more (or less) attention to themselves because of their content and relationships to other objects in the image.

Balance can also be described as achieving equilibrium. The problem with this definition is that artists rarely want things to be equal. It usually means that no part of the composition calls too much attention to itself at the expense of the rest of the image. This increases unity, but decreases variety, and hence interest.

There are two systems for achieving balance: Symmetry and Asymmetry

SYMMETRY
Symmetry means a mirror image -- one side is the mirror image of the other. Symmetry can occur in any orientation as long as the image is the same on either side of the central axis.

SYMMETRICAL BALANCE
A vertical axis is required to achieve balance with symmetry. Part of the reason is that we have struggled throughout our lives to perfect our balance in order to stand, walk, ride a bike, etc.. To do this we must have exactly the same weight on both sides of our bodies. Our axis of symmetry is vertical and this makes a good model for symmetry in visual information.

Symmetrical balance is also called formal balance because a form is used -- a mirror image about a vertical axis. The results look formal, organized and orderly.

TYPES OF SYMMETRY
Symmetry means that the sides are exact mirror images of each other. This limits symmetry's application to abstract images since objects in the real world are not truly symmetrical. Try folding a leaf down the center and notice that the opposite sides do not exactly correspond with one another. Fine artists rarely use pure symmetry for this reason. It is more applicable to commercial designs.

NEAR SYMMETRY
Near symmetry is based on symmetry but the two halves are not exactly the same. Slight variations will probably not change the balance but there is more potential for variety and hence more interest. When the sides become too different, symmetry ceases to exist and balance must depend on other concepts.

INVERTED SYMMETRY
Inverted symmetry uses symmetry with one half inverted like a playing cards. This is an interesting variation on symmetry but can make for an awkward balance.

BIAXIAL SYMMETRY

A symmetrical composition can have more than one axis of symmetry. Biaxial symmetry uses two axes of symmetry -- vertical and horizontal. These guarantee balance: top and bottom as well as left and right. The top and bottom can be the same as the left and right, or they can be different. The most regular and repetitive image occurs when they are the same.

More than two axes are possible. Snow flakes and kaleidoscopes have three axes of symmetry.

Radial symmetry is a related concept and can use any number of axes since the image seems to radiate out from the center, like a star.

ASYMMETRY
Asymmetry, also known as informal balance.

ASYMMETRICAL BALANCE

Asymmetry means without symmetry. That by itself has nothing to do with balance. It just means that there are no mirror images in a composition. The term, however, is usually used to describe a kind of balance that does not rely on symmetry: asymmetrical balance. There is no simple formula for achieving balance in asymmetrical balance so the designer must sense whether or not the composition is balanced. This is where your sense of balance really comes into play.

The composition either looks like it is balance or it does not. Where does your attention goes when you look at an image? If it seems to wander around more or less evenly, there is probably balance. If you seem to always come back to the same area, and that is not the center of the composition, then the balance is suspect.

Layout - Shapes

In visual literacy there is layout - a part of layout is shapes.

A shape is defined as an area that stands out from the space next to or around it due to a defined or implied boundary, or because of differences of value, color, or texture.

Reading shapes, we tend to dissect them into simpler forms based on geometrical units. Most people can immediately perceive the total area of a circle, a square, a triangle, an oval, or a rhombus, without difficulty. If we were shown an image for a couple of seconds, we probably would not be able to remember it in all the details, but we would have a general grasp of it's basic form. We can say that the geometric basis of shapes provides us with an elementary vocabulary, an alphabet of the shape language. It helps us to dissect, analyze, and structure the world.

Besides that intellectual perception, restricting our view of the outside world to things of practical interest and immediate necessity, we have a spontaneous vision of shape, the capacity to be surprised, enchanted, or impressed by it's visual phenomena. We respond to them emotionally. They hold for us their own expressive meaning and character.

Different shapes tell us different stories. The endless variations and interplays are stimulating our curiosity constantly. The sensory perception of shape is probably connected with the deepest levels of our perception of the world. It is universal, and can be understood beyond the limits of the cultural identity.

Circle - calm, pacific, assured, natural, optimistic. example: the sun

Square - dull, straight forward, honest, lacking imagination, stable, less natural than the circle. example: a box

Triangle - action, agitation, conflict, tension, and aspiration. example: the Pyramids, arrowheads

Shapes are in every part of a person's life. We can see a square in a window, a circle in the moon, a triangle in the roof of a house and even octagon in a stop sign.

Shapes serve many purposes in visual images. Value, texture, and color help us see different shapes.

Color Scheme



     Color scheme is another example of visual literacy in today's world.  Color scheme is an arrangement or combination of colors.  When people think of color scheme they usually thing about interior decorating or painting their house.  With a color scheme you can set the mood, attract attention,or make a statement.  A real like example of color scheme is when I wanted to redecorate my room last summer I decided I wanted the theme to be somewhat like a beach.  So, this meant that my color scheme would be blues, tans, and other colors that reminded me of the beach or complimented the other colors to make my room attractive.  Visual literacy means that the picture can be easily read by someone and a color scheme really makes this possible.  Having a color scheme can visually help someone understand what mood you were in or going for and what things naturally represent. 

To learn more about color schemes click here!

The Color Wheel

 

      An example of Visual Literacy in today's world is the color wheel.  A color wheel is a circle with different colored sectors used to show the relationship between colors.  Let me explain a little better.  The color wheel becomes a visual aid in helping us understand the principles of color.  The color wheel starts with three primary colors and then creates secondary colors by mixing them together.  The color wheel can be visually helpful and can contribute to the meaning of the whole.  The color wheel can visually help young children or adults learn how to mix colors and which colors can be made easily by mixing.  A real life example of how I use the color wheel would be that one day while I was painting I ran out of orange paint.  I had to make a color wheel to visually help me choose which colors I needed to mix.  I chose red and yellow and it worked out awesome!  Below is a video to help you understand the color wheel a little more.