Elements and Principles of design

1. Elements and Principles of design By Rebecca Sevigny

2. Typography • Definition: • Typography is a technique by using words into a form of an image. Explanation: • It can be a picture of something that has a distinct form (person's face, energy drinks, etc.) or it doesn't have any form at all. You can basically see them in advertisements or another form of art either with color or not.

3. Element of design: Tone • Definition: • It’s where the areas of light can come through directly and where areas are completely dark. In other words; the shadingin images • Explanation: • By using this technique, tone makes the image/picture more of a 3D image than a 2D because of a mixture of whites, blacks, and greys. There’s variations of different ways of shading like stippling, cross-hatching, etc.

4. Element of Design: Texture • Definition: • What the substance feels like when your looking at a photo. • Explanation: • By using various techniques, you can create a picture to look/feels like that it’s either soft or hard, rough or smooth, etc. This can also involves using tone and pattern to enhance the image to make it more realistic and you can understand what the element feels like.

5. Element of design: Shape • Definition: • The basic structure of an object before the fine details. • Explanation: • Every great piece always has a basic structure that you can easily tell what it is; like the shape of a circle, rectangle, etc. Sometimes the final product can’t be a defined object from the details.

6. Element of design: coloUr • Definition: • Part of light which has been reflected off an object; with variations of warm colours and cool colours • Explanation: • Colour makes a big difference in photos, by making the object stand out because of the mixture of primary and secondary colours. Colour makes it eye-catching with other tones/shades and the opposite colours.

7. Principles of design: emphasis • Definition: • To catch the person’s interest by using techniques to draw them in to see what’s most important. • Explanation: • It’s basically seeing what stands out from a photo. It doesn’t have to be dramatically different like a flamingo on a snow mountain. Other times, it’s basically using other techniques to make the object (that you want most important) to stand out; like using more dark tones in dark areas, bringing out the light areas to be more interesting.

8. Principles of design: Balance • Definition: • The way that the components in the image/photo are equally distributed. • Explanation: • There’s different concepts on how to interoperate balance in designs/images like symmetrical, asymmetrical, and radical (for example). The thing is, that us humans use balance because we’re naturally used to seeing things in balance. If the image is somewhat not balanced, we’d get uncomfortable because we don’t exactly see objects all wonky.

9. Principles of design: Contrast • Definition: • The combination of elements in artwork or photography. • Explanation: • Contrast makes the image look more interesting by using variations of elements, like tone, colour, etc. By using contrast, the mood from it can make the image exciting and interesting to look at. If there’s not enough of contrast, the image would be dull and not attractive.

10. Principles of design: Harmony • Definition: • The connection between each object that fits in with the photo/image/picture. • Explanation: • Harmony keeps within the subject that the image wants to show. For example: If you want to make a natural scenery, the elements are naturally wavy and not in direct form. You don’t want to make the trees all straight and blocked up. Every tree has its own characteristics and form. It’s not all the same.