Concept Wizards - Unique Concepts of Unique Customers

Conveying Movement through Anticipation

Justin Lemaire

If you are going to be a competent graphic designer that produces good results time and time again, you need to learn different principles of graphic design. These principles go over a lot of the elements that we’ve been discussing up to this point and for that reason are a good place to go to now that we have a firm understanding of the basic elements of graphic design.The first principle of design is the principle of movement and there are a number of different ways that you can create movement within a static picture (sounds a little incongruous I know, but hey that’s design for you!).

Remember that the picture you are creating is not a picture that you are creating to be placed in a dark room never to be seen again, but rather is a picture that will be viewed by people with experiences that you can use in your design. Therefore, a picture of a figure in some sort of body position that can not be held strongly implies motion through anticipation born from experience.

Consider a picture taken of a pitcher in the middle of their windup or a diver before they hit the water and after they’ve jumped. Both of these pictures are of people in positions that can not be held and for that reason there is anticipation of movement which in turn creates the impression of movement in the mind of the person viewing the picture.

Copying this principle whenever you are drawing live figures is one way to create movement in your designs.

Space Continued

Justin Lemaire

There are two more important ways that a designer can use space to add the illusion of depth to a drawing: detail and lines.

Detail:Detail is also sometimes referred to as aerial perspective because of the fact that it is modelled after something one might see when taking a look at a landscape from the air. Specifically, use of colour value variation and detail differentiation can create a perceived difference in depth by mimicking what a person would see from that position. If you make parts of the landscape that recede into the background less distinct than parts of the landscape that are supposed to be in the foreground, then the mind’s eye will infer the less distinct objects farther back in the hierarchy of the image.

Linear Perspective: This is one of the oldest tricks in the book and it goes back to the image that you get when staring down the street. In addition to observations regarding the size and vertical position of objects, you might notice also that the two lines representing the sides of the street will converge at some point on the horizon that you are staring at. If you replicate this idea on a canvas through the use of converging lines, that exact same feeling of depth can be created on the graphic that you are working on.

This brings us to the end of the elements of graphic design. I’ll now move onto some principles of design that are built on these elements.

Elements of Graphic Design Theory: Space

Justin Lemaire

The last major element of graphic design theory to cover is the concept of space. Space is important because every single drawing that you will ever create, by its very nature, is going to be imperfect. The graphic designer will often attempt to recreate a three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface and while this can never be completely perfect, there are many ways that an artist can mimic the depth of the third dimension on paper.

Vertical Location Combined with Size: When a person looks at a receding street, what they will notice is that as the street gets further away, the elements on the street get higher in their vision and smaller. An artist can therefore create the illusion of depth by placing objects higher on the page and making them smaller in order to make them appear as if they are farther away than objects that are lower on the page and larger.

Overlap: Another way to give objects depth is to overlap some objects with other objects. An object that is partially covered is inferred to be behind the object that is partially covering it.

These are just two ways in which a graphic designer can add the illusion of depth to their design; two other ways will be discussed in the next post.

More Colour Terms

Justin Lemaire

One thing that is especially important to recognize about colours is the fact that there are many different qualities possessed by many different colours based on the interactions they carry out with our eyes. Colours like red, orange or yellow have an advancing quality to them whereas colours like blue have a receding quality and graphic designers can use these qualities to create depth. This will be discussed at a later time in more detail, but for now it is important to understand that you can use colour differentiation in the same way that you would use monochrome value differentiation.

In addition to that, there are many colour schemes that can be used in different respects. These colour schemes are monochromatic (only one hue is involved), analogous (colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel), complimentary (colours located opposite from each other on the colour wheel) and triadic (colours that are spread equally from each other on the colour wheel, such as the primary colours). There are no hard and fast rules as to when different colour schemes should be used aside from personal preference (i.e. if someone is creating a map with different colours representing population, they might want to use an analogous colour scheme for the graduation), but as you do more and more graphic design, experience will suggest to you when one is more appropriate.

Value, Colour and Graphic Design

Justin Lemaire

Value has already been discussed in a previous post, but just to refresh your memory it is a design term that refers to the level of darkness or lightness of an area within an image. Value is actually a relative term in its colloquial use, but when it is expanded to mean different parts of the spectrum, you are now talking about colour which is a very different beast to tackle.

Colour has three different properties to it: hue, colour value and intensity. While these terms might seem boring to you right now, bear with me because this is stuff you are going to need to know later on when you tackle more advanced concepts of graphic design.

Hue is a property of colour that refers to the actual colour being reflected as a wavelength of light. Therefore, when you are talking about primary colours, secondary colours and other such colour types, what you are discussing is the hue of the colour in question. Value, as is true with the original definition, refers to the relative darkness or lightness of the hue in question. Intensity refers to the amount of black or white has been mixed in with the hue, with a pure hue being a colour that has not had any black or white added to it. Intensity is also sometimes referred to as saturation.

We will deal with more terms regarding colour in the next post and then we will come back to it later on when colour theory is discussed in more detail.

Texture and Graphic Design

Justin Lemaire

Moving along the list of graphic design elements brings us to the idea of texture. Texture is an element of graphic design that is a different beast from the line and a shape, although at the same time the different regions that are created within shapes often through the use of line techniques is what ends up creating texture in the first place. People know what texture is because everything that you pick up in real life has a texture. The pop can that you hold has a rather smooth texture, while the bit of tree bark that you might pick up from your backyard lawn will have a texture that is very rough and knotted.

Because texture is an important part of life, naturally the artist has to find some way to mimic texture over a two dimensional surface. The way artists do this is through the alteration of different regions within the picture, putting contrasting colours and shades of light and dark next to each other. This serves to create the impression of depth in an image and along with that comes an impression of texture from the relief that is displayed within the depth of the image.

This is usually extremely hard for an artist to do well. The good news for us graphic designers however is that many pieces of graphic design software (like Photoshop) will do a lot of texture for us, so we don’t have to do it ourselves. I’ll talk more about that later, when texture becomes more important.

Elements of Graphic Design: Positive and Negative Space

Justin Lemaire

Continuing with the theme of introducing the different elements of graphic design brings us to a particularly interesting aspect of shape elements within graphic design. This concept, known as positive and negative space, can actually be a central concept to your artistic design. There have been many artists (most notably MC Esher) that have created whole careers around the idea of exploiting positive and negative space and they have been successful because the results of those types of designs are usually very nice to look at.

Quite simply put, positive space is any area within the finished design where the artist has put something. In other words, if you have an easel in front of you (or a Photoshop backdrop), anything that you place on that backdrop is considered to be in positive space. Therefore, by induction it seems pretty clear to assume that everything else is negative space. What many artists have done to make this element very interesting is create their positive space in a way that accentuates the negative space and allows something to be created from it as well.

A good example that you can find on the internet is MC Esher’s horses painting, whereby the horses created in the positive space have also created horses in the negative space by their presence. The end result is quite remarkable and it very nicely illustrates the point regarding positive and negative space; two sub-elements of the shape element of graphic design.

Elements of Graphic Design: The Shape

Justin Lemaire

Once you have an understand of exactly what lines are, how those lines work and the different things you can do with the different types of lines, in truth most of the work of learning about the second element of graphic design is already complete. However, at the same time there are some added concepts when you transition from lines to shapes and therefore it is still worth devoting a post to the discussion of the shape element of graphic design.

Shapes are simply objects that are enclosed, which is what denotes them from a contour drawing (refer to the previous posts on lines for definition of a contour drawing). Shapes can either be created from the intersection of multiple lines, or they can be created from changes in colour and value (refer to the previous post on lines for a discussion on value) that create enclosed shapes in those changes.

Since shapes are two dimensional, they do not have either a volume or a mass, which is the main difference between shapes in a painting and parts of a sculpture.

One thing that you need to understand about shapes as well is that they are intimately linked to one of the most important concepts of graphic design. The concept is known as positive and negative space and it will be discussed in more detail in the next post.

Elements of Graphic Design: The Line, Part II

Justin Lemaire

Lines are not just important in terms of suggestion, but quite often they can also be important in terms of what you want to convey within the meat of the drawing itself. For example, when you use lines to trace out some of the edges of a form without actually completing the form (as is done in some artistic styles), then you are using the line to execute what is known as a contour drawing.

In addition to contour drawings however, lines can be used in order to imply something within a shape itself. For example, if you had a person next to a box, you could use line drawings in order to suggest that the person is moving the box in a certain direction. While it is not explicitly stated in the drawing, the suggestion is clear enough if the lines are placed correctly and lines that are drawn in such as a way as to depict movement or at least strongly suggest it are known as gesture lines or gesture drawings.

Finally, lines can be used for filling in certain graphics as well and do not just have to be on the outside. A certain type of line drawing known as crosshatching can be used to grey in some areas of different figures which depending on how they are contrasted with the neighbouring areas can bring out three dimensional reliefs in certain figures. Lines that are used to create areas of darker shading inside a figure are called value lines and the area itself is referred to as an area of value within the figure.

The next post will deal with the second element of graphic design, the shape.

Elements of Graphic Design: The Line

Justin Lemaire

The line is the most basic unit of graphic design and it is undoubtedly something you already have great experience with, even if you happen to never have done anything artistic before. A line is a simple form that contains width and length but at the same time does not contain any depth and for that reason is a wholly two dimensional structure. Lines can be used in graphic design for the creation of borders, outlines or anything else that might be used to provide contrast with the shapes and surrounding areas of design within the final graphical product.

One way in which lines are particularly useful is in the conveyance of a particular mood or feeling. For example, horizontal lines suggest a feeling of quiet calm, which is why graphics such as sunrises or sunsets will frequently be accompanied by areas of horizontal lining. Vertical lining, on the other hand, is associated more with the idea of movement rather than static calm and diagonal or haphazard lining has this feeling in the extreme. The next time you’re looking at pictures, look for the directions and orientations of lines and see if you can see the feelings suggested here in the lines that are drawn on those pictures. That’ll be your first assignment on the road to being an excellent graphic designer.

Next time we’ll cover a few more sub-elements related to the line element of graphic design.