The Principles of D E S I G N

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What is ‘principles of design’?

From my point of view, the principles of design is the use of the elements of design in such a way that an artwork feels coherent and convey the information its supposed to give.  I believe that the proper application of the principles of design  determines how successful we are at creating a work of art and how good or bad it is.

What are the principles of design?

Through out my research i came across these:

  1. BALANCE
  2. DOMINANCE/EMPHASIS/CONTRAST
  3. UNITY
  4. SCALE/PROPORTION

1. BALANCE

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It is the distribution of the visual weight of objects, colors, texture, and space. If the design was a scale, these elements should be balanced to make a design feel stable. In symmetrical balance, the elements used on one side of the design are similar to those on the other side; in asymmetrical balance, the sides are different but still look balanced. In radial balance, the elements are arranged around a central point and may be similar.

2. DOMINANCE/EMPHASIS/CONTRAST

dominance-size

It is the part of the design that catches the viewer’s attention. Usually the artist will make one area stand out by contrasting it with other areas. The area could be different in size, color, texture, shape, etc.

3. UNITY

unity-hands

It is the feeling of harmony between all parts of the work of art, which creates a sense of completeness.

4. SCALE/PROPORTION

x-ray-shell

Using the relative size of elements against each other can attract attention to a focal point. When elements are designed larger than life, scale is being used to show drama.

Sources:

https://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/building_lessons/principles_design.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_elements_and_principles

 

Project 1

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.” 

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18 emotions expressed using lines. My main sources of inspiration for this project are: cartoons which portrays this kind of emotions in an exaggerated manner; personal interpretation/perception of these emotions.

  1. Anxious– When i’m anxious i usually feel like i’m suffocating or drowning. Here i tried to depict bubbles, as if i’m being drag into the abyss of the ocean.
  2. Embarrassed– This one is inspired from cartoons. Whenever you feel embarrassed you feel sweaty and want to hide from the rest of the world. So i tried to make sweat droplets in a cartoon way with black droplets hiding behind the white droplets. By contrasting those two, i wanted to show that the black droplets are hiding behind the white droplets.
  3. Bizarre– Also inspired from cartoons. Whenever i see something bizarre i immediately think about the cartoon cliche, eyes watching you from every direction and wavy random lines.
  4. Exhausted(presentation)- This one is interesting because, when i feel exhausted, my body and my mind feels like falling apart. In the panel, i used lines in such a way that it looks like loose threads hanging,dripping,falling,crumbling down. The contrast here is that the lines is less dense at the top showing that energy is being sapped out.
  5. Fragile– To me fragile feels like cracked glass. The medium used to demonstrate this emotion is collage.( give a sense of contrast )
  6. Systematic– To me it feels like statistics,graphs being plotted.
  7. Lyrical– Lyrical is melodious and everything having a melody must have nice rhythm. So here i used alternate black and white regions to try and create a sense of rhythm but rhythm alone is not enough lyrical, therefore i incorporated circles going in and out of space (creating some depth) flowing around.
  8. Turbulent– Inspired from nature. i.e crashing waves. Medium used is charcoal. I think that charcoal is a really good medium to capture the swirls of the crashing waves and to emphasize the this turbulent feeling (smudging).
  9. Nonsensical– Meaningless, it is defined using lines to make shapes which does not have any or any sense at all! For instance i included a circle to make the pattern out of context.
  10. Psychotic– Through experimentation using chinese ink and blowing through a straw, i came with this random, bold pattern with curvy spikes and immediately saw it as psychotic.
  11. Ambiguous– For me ambiguous is vague, unclear and blurry. So for this emotion i tried to make it like out of focus circles which is called as ‘bokeh’ balls in photography.
  12. Distracted– Whenever i feel distracted my thoughts diverge away and for me to focus back (converge) takes a lot of time. This is what i wanted to demonstrate using the lines here.
  13. Sensual– To me sensual is related to curvy shapes and forms which arouses the senses. Inspiration: female figure; flowers.
  14. Sloven– Disorder, untidy, careless. When approaching this emotion, i tried to be messy like scribbling around, smudging paint everywhere…
  15. Spontaneous– I found this one quite interesting because to me spontaneous feel sudden, brusque like an explosion.
  16. Aggressive– Aggressive feels bold and spiky to me. Spikes going all directions.
  17. Awkward– Through experimentation i came through this idea. Awkwardness is  rather a deep feeling but yet it feels like flowing away after sometimes. By using dots i wanted to show this deep feeling and by shaping/grouping them into a wave form suggested the way it flows.
  18. Indecisive– Left or right? Up or down? I do not know where to go. To me this is how it feels.

Research and Experimentation

“A line is a dot that went for a walk”

Mediums
Mediums- Graphic Pens, Brush Pens, Chinese Ink, Water colour pencils, Charcoal, Collage
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