Elements and Principles of Design (Week 10)

Elements and Principles of Design (Week 10)

When prin­ci­ples of design repli­cate prin­ci­ples of thought, the act of arrang­ing infor­ma­tion becomes an act of insight.” ~Edward R. Tufte

Design is a del­i­cate bal­ance between the­ory and aes­thetic sen­si­bil­i­ties. The more you prac­tice the the­ory behind the ele­ments and prin­ci­ples of design, the more it will become sec­ond nature to apply proper design prin­ci­ples to your own work. Your knowl­edge of how to cre­ate, fix, or cri­tique a design will dras­ti­cally  improve.

Gestalt and the Prin­ci­ples of Graphic Design

The sum of the whole is greater than its parts” is the idea behind Gestalt the­ory. It is impor­tant to under­stand each ele­ment and prin­ci­ple sep­a­rately, but even more impor­tant is how each ele­ment and prin­ci­ple of design work together to cre­ate a cohe­sive over­all design.

You will employ the Ele­ments and Prin­ci­ples of Design as well as Color The­ory in all projects from this point for­ward. You will be graded not only on how well you imple­ment the ele­ments and prin­ci­ples in your design, but on how well you explain your use of them in each design.

Resources

Ele­ments of Graphic Design Review | Ele­ments and Prin­ci­ples of Graphic Design Basics | The Prin­ci­ples of DesignThe Ele­ments of Design | Clas­sic Color Schemes | 60–30-10, or How Many Col­ors? | Color The­ory Intro­duc­tion | Colour Lovers

Typo­graphic Poster Design

You will be design­ing sev­eral dif­fer­ent posters with a typo­graphic focus. The first required poster design will be a Clas­sic Type­face poster. Fur­ther details on the project can be found on the poster design project page.

About the Author