Elements of Design

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Elements of design are structural foundations that can affect the message and content of a design. These elements are flexible and can overlap.

Here are the first 4 elements:
- Contrast
- Repetition
- Alignment
- Proximity

Contrast:
Contrast represents the differences in the design; the greater the difference the higher the contrast.
This can be presented through the use of colour, scale and typeface.
Contrast can be used to pull the eye of the audience and control the path their eyes take when looking at the design, which is often done without their knowledge.
In terms of colour, black and white provide the highest possible contrast.
Text size can also be used to contrast, highlighting more important aspects of the design to others.

Repetition:
Repetition provides continuity and consistency to a design. To keep a design coherent, colours, typefaces and layout are repeated to provide a sense of unity and eliminate chaos.
Repetition can also provide impact and familiarity. For example on book covers, authors will repeat a typeface for all of their books to create a sense of recognition for familiar readers.
Repetition keeps designs simplistic and accessible for audiences.
It is also considered fewer colours can make something seem higher end, for instance, Apple frequently design their products’ packaging using a simple white colour scheme.

Alignment:
Alignment is used to make order from chaos. By aligning a design correctly designs can become more approachable and simpler for the audience to read and understand.
Audiences can easily be fooled by alignment and its manipulation is regularly gone unnoticed.
It is primarily used to create order but also group different sections of information.
A key element of correct alignment of text, is to always allow the eye to see the start and end of the same line making it easier to read. Often long sentences and large graphs force the reader to run their finger under the text to keep to the right line. It is also true for the difference between western and eastern alignment, it is very difficult for a western eye to read writing aligned to the right.
When noticed poor alignment just ‘feels wrong’ to the audience.
It can also be used in grouping text and images together, creating a relationship.

Proximity:
Proximity refers to the closeness of design elements and how it is used to create relationships between different aspects of the design. For example, in magazine interviews, quotes are pulled and put in close proximity or in between the text to create expectation that this interview is related to that quote, pulling the reader in.
It is important to be conscious of things that you do not want in a relationship as if they are in close proximity the audience can create their own relationship between the information.
Good use of proximity, like alignment, can assist audiences in understanding the organisation and structure of the design.
Proximity can be adjusted in text using line leading to pull text together or separate them.


Analysing Empire Magazine:
The red and white contrast each other, however, the grey text is lost in the background. If the background had a cold blue tone rather than warm yellow, perhaps the red would have had more contrast.
The majority of text uses the same typeface with only slightly different weights and textures, which gives continuity.
The text is all centrally aligned to make it clear.
The scale and proximity of the main title to the cover image illustrates their relationship. It is also made clearer through the texture on the 'The Hunger Games', echoing the destruction of the main image.



Using only cardboard squares and a black card, we were challenged with representing words by arranging the squares into abstract forms to convey the themes and feelings of the words. It demonstrates how by only using the barebones of design in the initial planning, more imaginative and out of the box ideas can be realised.






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