Logo is essence of any Brand. It reflects your brand value and identity. So Designing a Logo is very important for any business. Most of the brands are recognized by people with just looking at their logos. So designing right logos for your brand is the first step to achieve right Marketing Mantra.
Designing logos comes with its own share of problems. Today we are discussing some issues related with Logo Designing. For logo designers, trademarks, copyright and registered designs can be a career minefield. The advent of cookie cutter designs and design contests isn’t helping. Just getting from basic design to finished product needs a sort of designer’s travel insurance in the form of knowing what might be a problem.
It’s quite possible in all innocence to infringe on one of these things through sheer ignorance and lack of information. The legal side is that a court ultimately has to judge any real dispute. Logos, which are by definition a combination of the legal properties of trademarks, copyright and registered designs, can also infringe on all three.
For example:
A square inside a circle, and a letter in bold font are the basic logo.
Party A says the logo infringes on their trademark because of the square/circle combination.
Party B says the letter in the circle infringes their registered design.
These are actually pretty shaky claims. There needs to be a clear, damaging resemblance to existing designs to constitute an actual infringement. The parties are within their rights to claim infringement, but they didn’t invent the square and circle combination or the font.
If basic issues are fairly straightforward, ironically, the real danger comes from another direction- design software. If you have a look at logo design contests, you’ll notice that the briefs include a requirement for Adobe Illustrator files, vector drawing etc, as specifications. Most logo design work is done on this high quality software, because it’s a lot easier to work with.
Now look at the designs themselves. See any common elements? See large numbers of designs which, by virtue of using the same software, tend to create natural points of conflict in terms of the logic of trademarks, copyright and registered designs?
There’s a problem here. Design briefs for logos do include common elements. The brief wants particular things. The designers, on the other hand, want their designs to stand out, despite these common elements. The result is an unholy mix of individuality and commonality in designs.
OK, that’s a natural result of briefs and the requirements of the design themes, right? Unavoidable, to a degree? The designer had to do what was required in the brief, correct?
Yes, and that’s where the huge clash with trademarks, copyright and registered designs begins. Large numbers of cookie-cutter designs are coming onstream. Clashes are inevitable. For designers, this is a rock and a hard place. Matters aren’t helped by corporate culture, which tends to prefer the sort of designs which “look corporate”, and are actually a very narrow bandwidth of design concepts. These designs are unspeakably lazy conventional and boring. It’s no coincidence they clash so often and so easily.
Designers will be pleased to hear that their artistic preferences and instincts finally have their vindication- “Don’t do what everyone else is doing”. Good designers don’t imitate lazy designers while they can still breathe, so the way out is to use your talent. If you can simply outclass other designs, you’re unlikely to infringe on anything. The highly individual, standout design is better business, anyway. Please feel free to share your comments and thoughts on this.
In some ways, cooperative systems make a designer’s life much easier. It’s easier to enjoy even a mediocre experience with friends, because humans like to goof, harass, support, and suffer each other. And unlike a similar benefit from competitive multiplayer, cooperative games don’t need to worry as much about the usual kinds of balance — if a player or item is overly powerful, the players can decide how to share that power.
Yet for all the advantages, there are unique problems in cooperative gameplay. Even if you target a collaborative audience, with a happy-fuzzy theme that encourages cooperation, it’s entirely possible to create mechanics that put players at each others’ throats.
Here are 5 unique cooperative design problems I’ve observed or designed around, along with some possible solutions!
PROBLEM 1: KNOWLEDGE MISMATCH
“She always tells me what to do.” “He makes the dumbest mistakes.” “You’re not listening to me! I know how to win!”
“Veteran syndrome” happens most often in cooperative puzzle or strategy games. True cooperation is difficult when one player can make a master plan and then order the others to execute on that — and for that plan to always be the best solution. This causes intense domination and/or boredom.
Consider playing Portal 2 with someone who had already played it 8 times previously. Even if they play very politely and don’t treat you like a hand-puppet, it’s just not as fun, right?
Concrete Solutions
Real-time challenge: if there’s enough time pressure, El Capitan can’t perfectly order every move. This results in more individual tests of skill, and more satisfaction in your personal performance… but this increased individuality can also result in each player choosing their own goal, rather than contributing to the group goal cooperatively. We deliberately made the combat in Moon Hunters frenzied action rather than turn-based, in order to give players mental independence.
Match-making: if you ensure newbies and veterans each play with matching skillsets, it can be somewhat mitigated … but this breaks up friends and isolates communities. Dilute communication: you can’t give orders when you can’t talk! Journey benefits enormously from allowing more experienced players to role model rather than order. Teaching by showing is also more supportive than teaching by instruction.
Secret information: you can’t give orders when you don’t have all of the necessary data, and other players have incentive not to share with you. Werewolf simultaneously encourages competition and wary cooperation, resulting in even the most experienced players often keeping their mouths firmly shut.
Unpredictability: in Moon Hunters, we procedurally generate both the level design and world map, as well as cause dynamic responses from non-player characters, based on player choices. Cooperative players can vote on which choice to make, but one player probably won’t tell everyone else what to vote for with any kind of authority, since it’s unlikely even an experienced player knows what the “correct” choice is.
Solution Goals
Give players a reason to trust each other. Or, give players a reason to distrust each other.
At worst, encourage teaching by example and allow some player goals to be mutually exclusive.
PROBLEM 2: SKILL MISMATCH
“Noobs are the worst.” “I always carry my team.” “I feel useless. My team does better without me.”
Striving together to accomplish something genuinely difficult is extremely satisfying, and possibly the reason the human species has succeeded. Yet we resent being forced to cooperate with people that make our games more difficult. Even if we love that person. This causes frustration on one side and (assuming the other player is aware of the difficulties they’re adding) shame on the other. And when players see that their performance is much worse than even A.I. teammates…
Your first experience with team sports was probably somewhat less pleasant due to skill mismatch. Although it can be a great moment for character building and personal growth, as game designers, it’s worthwhile to try and improve our players’ experience.
Concrete Solutions
More is always better: no such thing as failure or “harming” the team. If you can re-structure your rules to reward even participation, all players will be more welcoming, and may even reach out to newbies warmly without further incentive.
Match-making: players could be automatically placed where they are most needed, and the game suggests how to employ their skills usefully. However, as with other kinds of match-making, this will still separate communities and friends from one another.
Randomness: most cross-generational games allow for a strong element of randomness, empowering younger players (though often at the cost of older players’ satisfaction).
Subjective skill: if you can add an element of open-ended personal expression, every player can decide for themselves how much they ‘won’, separate from score tallies. We applied this in Moon Hunters by allowing players to define themselves in terms of personality traits — even if you didn’t help kill a boss very effectively, you can still feel special for being the one with a reputation for being “Cunning”.
Mentor network: explicitly acknowledging the imbalance and encouraging skilled players to befriend and train newbies can really help with community building. But any mechanical incentives should be closely monitored for potential to cause bullying or conspiracy.
Solution Goals
Let even the newest, least skilled player meaningfully contribute to the team. Provide a means for more experienced players to connect and share their insight.
PROBLEM 3: PUBLIC HUMILIATION
“I just want to practice.” “I don’t like multiplayer games.” “I don’t know how to do it.”
Remember trying to speak a new language in front of a native speaker for the first time? It’s horrible and intimidating, and that’s how many people feel the first time they try playing a new multiplayer game, even if it’s cooperative and there’s no mechanical competition. Some players will withdraw due to stress before the game even begins! Performance anxiety is strongest when people are counting on you.
This is one of the hardest problems because at its worst, the sufferer may never play your game at all! But there are many ways to lessen the impact and minimize early quitters.
Concrete Solutions
Private tutorial: give player a supportive place to learn, without time limits. Ideally it is 100% private and feels ‘safe’ in every way, without judgment.
Newbie “channel”: give players a chat channel or other place in game to ask (self-selecting, helpful) veterans for advice and information.
Solo mode: although expensive, a way to play the game without prying eyes can help people get comfortable before making the leap to multiplayer. This can be quite limited, and ideally throughout, it’s clear how friends would enhance the experience. We’re fully supporting single-player Moon Hunters.
Friends-only mode: why allow strangers in at all? I’ve never played Minecraft with strangers and I never will. It’s less traumatising to learn with friends, though still not ideal for many.
Mentor network: by rewarding veterans for actively guiding newer players, and rewarding newbies for pairing with veterans, the tender sensitive time may be easier to overcome. Note that this would still come after a period of the newbie learning the basic controls on their own.
Solution Goals
The first test of skill should be for the lowest possible stakes. The tutorial must not allow public failure, and cannot disappoint another player. People who prefer solo play can be lured into cooperation, if they can engage on their own terms, when they are ready.
PROBLEM 4: UNIFORMITY
“Which one am I?” “It doesn’t matter whether I play or not.” “I need a new hat.” “She can do everything I can, but better.”
One of the psychological disadvantages to any multiplayer game, but especially cooperation, is that you can no longer play the part of the all-important, unique, protagonist snowflake. If all players are the same (perhaps to even the playing field for knowledge and skill mismatches), your identity is lost, your relationships to other characters feels shallow, and your immersion is weakened due to feeling like your “role” isn’t really your own.
Transformice is an amazing cooperative game, but if there were no shaman, we’d all lose interest much more quickly.
Concrete Solutions
Creative expression: even the smallest avatar customisation helps people feel unique, as does the most basic way to express themselves, such as jumping, movement, etc.
Mechanical roles: finding your identity through unique capabilities can be satisfying, too. Although many games (such as Moon Hunters) rely on a rigid “class” structure, if a system is sufficiently complex and/or open-ended, this will happen naturally, as people’s inherent tastes and talents lead them to take on different kinds of tasks.
Celebrity: if you can provide a venue for players to be extremely visible, their skill alone will make them feel unique. This has a strong impact, mostly for your most vocal minority of players.
Limited population: with only a few players on screen at a time, you may feel more unique, even if you’re identical. Your personality will be more obvious.
Recognize behaviour patterns: when a game calls attention to how we are different in playstyle, we feel more different. Try to show when someone is “the most” something, even if it doesn’t mean they are the best. Note due to its emotional self-motivated content, high-value extrinsic rewards will severely limit this kind of system’s value.
Solution Goals
Feeling unique and remarkable is a core social pleasure, especially in anonymous environments. Empower the player to show their personality.
PROBLEM 5: SCHADENFREUDE
P1: “…” (leaves the game) P2: —“HAHAHAHA! THIS GAME IS AWESOME!”
Our suffering can amuse others, and the more you rely on someone else, the more their harassment can cause frustration, hurt feelings, and resentment. Cooperative games are a unique opportunity for jerks to stab trusting innocents in in the back.
Bartle’s player types theory calls these folks “killers”. They will actively seek out and destroy the happiness of other players. So what can we do about these folks?
Concrete Solutions
Limited consequences/rewards. Most obvious, but least effective. By limiting mechanical consequences, you’re also limiting the power of your cooperative efforts.
Official peacekeepers: also known as moderators, volunteers can actually be more effective than customer service, though they are often very high-maintenance.
Culture pruning/normalize awesome: this is a quest for a holy grail, and more difficult the larger your playerbase is. Find, recognize, and reward standout community members that don’t tolerate jerks and who contribute to the kind of culture you want. The US Department of Health and Human Services has shown that children with problem behaviours can be seriously improved by being near more “socially competent” children.
Friends-only: by putting the power in the players to choose who to play with, they can’t really blame the game when they are “griefed”.
Unclear win/loss condition: by making a success more about personal expression, and less about strategy or skill, players of “killer” type (who mostly want the feeling of domination and superiority) are likely to to lose interest quickly.
Solution Goals
Sometimes suffering is okay. Identify when and where it’s “fair” for your demographic to encounter jerk behaviour and permit it in those places.
SUMMARY
At their best, cooperative games aren’t just about working together towards a common goal! They’re also about helping every player feel useful, appreciated, and unique. If you can identify mechanics that are interfering with collaborative behaviours, and replace them with incentive to trust or lead by example, you’re on your way to a gratifying experience. Feel free to hit me up on Twitter @kitfoxgames with any suggestions of other unique co-op problems or solutions.
In linguistics and semiotics, a notation is a system of graphics or symbols, characters and abbreviated expressions, used in artistic and scientific disciplines to represent technical facts and quantities by convention. Therefore, a notation is a collection of related symbols that are each given an arbitrary meaning, created to facilitate structured communication within a domain knowledge or field of study.
Standard notations refer to general agreements in the way things are written or denoted. The term is generally used in technical and scientific areas of study like mathematics,physics, chemistry and biology, but can also be seen in areas like business, economics and music.
The dictionary defines contemporary as (1) living or occurring at the same time, or (2) belonging to or occurring in the present. Simply put, contemporary at its core refers to things “of the moment.”
How is Contemporary Design Different from Modern Design?
How does Contemporary Design Relate to Other Styles?
Because contemporary design is always evolving, it easily relates to other styles no matter what they are. A space of almost any given style can have contemporary elements due to the very nature of contemporariness – that is, as a space’s design changes to accommodate the shifting preferences, tastes, and needs of the people who live there, that evolution inherently creates a contemporary space.
Contemporary + Modern – Contemporary spaces can still (and often do) incorporate modern elements and pieces. To make these spaces truly contemporary, however, the modern pieces (e.g., low sofa, shag rug) are mixed with other non-modern elements (e.g., concrete floor, graffiti-type wall mural).
Contemporary + Traditional – Traditional furnishings take on a contemporary look and feel when they are combined with lighter elements. For example, blonde wood, an ombre rug, and a light grey color bring a decidedly contemporary vibe to this traditional-inspired sofa seating with its curves and tufting.
Contemporary + Rustic – A wood-heavy design can be brought into a contemporary design realm with a few strategic inclusions, such as plenty of clean straight lines (which juxtapose, and show off, the wood grain beautifully) and cozy layers in neutral colors.
What Are Contemporary Design Elements
Of course, the dynamic nature of contemporary design makes this section time-locked. But, today, we’ll do our best to showcase what types of design elements are contemporary touches.
Neutral, masculine color palette – Feminine elements don’t tend to take root in contemporary design; rather, the overall effect is more muted, mature, and masculine. This is particularly true of the color palette.
Sleek, clean lines – Contemporary design is grounded; nothing here feels over-the-top.Super decorative items are omitted in favor of simplicity and cleanliness in contemporary forms. This includes low, simple sofas.
Colorful and/or oversized art – Softer art may be mixed in to a contemporary art gallery wall, but what creates a contemporary feel is the inclusion of oversized, often colorful, pieces or a geometric wallpaper backdrop that READS as oversized art.
Clever storage solutions – Contemporary design is all about smart, hidden, and/or unexpected storage solutions. This includes architectural storage solutions, such as behind or inside of walls, as well as furniture-based storage, such as the drawers camouflaged in the sculptural elements on these side tables. So pretty and functional!
Tailored, or nonexistent, skirts – A simple, clean aesthetic when it comes to fabrics bespeaks contemporary design – keep the ruffles and excess fabric at bay. This tailored black bed frame wrap is a completely contemporary touch.
Color blocking – Color that makes a space look and feel fresh, new, and inviting is generally part of a contemporary scheme. Color blocking is a common way to carry this out via a contemporary space’s accents, such as painting the ends of a rustic wooden table with white blocks of color.
Black and reflective accents – Chrome or nickel finishes, glass and mirrors, ebony wood and other materials – these are accents that typically feel right at home in contemporary design. A glass coffee table, for example, is a perfect complement to a low-slung, simple black sofa in a contemporary space. A monochromatic black kitchen with variations of shine is also uber-contemporary.
Cozy, comfortable layers – Residing somewhere between the minimalism that’s found in modern interiors and the often-excessive elements of traditional, cottage, and other styles, is contemporary layering. The focus of this layering is generally to incorporate friendliness and spontaneity into a space with ho-hum tendencies.
Patterns – Classic and geometric pattern plays an important role in contemporary design today. This colorful low seat and ottoman set, for example, incorporates a subtle contemporary vibe with its diagonal striped weave.
A work-in-progress – As you know by now, contemporary design is ever-evolving. It shifts subtly over time, but it is never “finished,” never static. This is a key component of what contemporary design is.
What Contemporary Design Is Not
Before we set out to quantify certain design elements that are not innately contemporary, there’s a caveat: Each of these discussion points can actually be part of contemporary design. While this seems like an oxy moron, it actually makes sense because of the ever-evolving scope of contemporary design. So, the points below may or may not appear in contemporary spaces, and their presence or absence does not in and of itself qualify the space’s contemporary-ness.
It’s not…bright pops of color. Whereas modern design thrives on neutral expanses with pops of bold color, contemporary design uses this less. Tones and shades of similar hues are more likely to be found in contemporary design, such as the brown and grey neutrals of this dining area – large wooden table with brown leather chairs.
It’s not…feminine. Sleek, it definitely is. Casual and inviting, sure. Even light and airy at times. But contemporary design draws the line when it comes to feminine design elements. It’s more substantive and grounded than that, as a rule.
It’s not…static.As you are aware by now, contemporary design is anything but static. Although it’s quite comfortable in its own skin (if you have contemporary tastes, you like what you like right now, regardless of reference to past design), universal contemporary design is ever-evolving, sometimes slowly and sometimes not.
It’s not…over the top. Contemporary interiors prefer to not call attention to any one past design era; rather. In fact, these interiors prefer to show themselves in calm and collected maturity of presentness, with nothing glaringly reminiscent or futuristic.
History of Contempory design
There is some confusion about Modern vs. Contemporary as idioms of design. Strictly speaking, the words can have the same meaning, depending on the context but when referring to architecture and design, they can take on other connotations.
Modernism really refers to a period of design that began with the Arts & Crafts Movement of 1875 and evolved through several eras until it ended with Post-Modernism of the early 1980’s.
Contemporary means, “of the same period, or at the present time” and is, by definition always evolving and changing rather than being fixed to a specific set of aesthetic characteristics or values. What is contemporary today will be history in the future, but modernism refers to the minimal functionalism of the 20th Century.
Modernist Design movements occurred sequentially over the 20th Century. Each was a reaction to or a rejection of the aesthetic, political and lifestyle characteristics that preceded it. Here is a brief outline of some of the important and better-known design movements of Modernism.
Arts & Crafts 1875-1915 The Arts & Crafts movement began in Britain as a reaction to the de-humanizing effects of the late 19th century industrialization. The movement embraced craftsmanship and the integrity of simple functional forms and evolved through the American experience of the Mission period and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School.
Art Nouveau 1880-1910 Sensuous, organic forms, whiplash lines and exaggerated embellishments inspired by nature characterized this movement with influence from the art of Japan. This new ornamentalism, the first popular style of the 20th Century, reached its height in the U.S with the amazing glass work of Louis Tiffany.
Wiener Werkstatte 1903-1933 The Vienna Workshop consisted of one hundred artisans producing hand-made metal craft in a “reductive style” of early minimal modernism. Its evolution to florid, organic elements suggested the origins of what would soon follow in the Art Deco Movement.
De Stijl 1917-1928 De Stijl, Dutch for “The Style”, straight-lined and bold geometric forms formed a mostly theoretical approach to design by architects and artists who were focused on the creation of a universal style in architecture design and the graphic arts.
Bauhaus School 1919-1933 Was at core of the modern movement and the fundamentalist design and social ethic of ”form follows function.” The Bauhaus ideology embraced the notion of straight-forward, honest, functional design and was an extension of the principals of Arts & Crafts, except that it advocated manufacturing for the masses through the use of machine fabrication. The Bauhaus represented the critical connection between the decorative arts and industrial design and projected its pathos into what would become the origins of the modern, glass-walled skyscraper. Walter Gropius, founder of the school, went on to teach architecture at Harvard. Mies van der Rohe, regarded by most as the father of modern architecture, was a product of the Bauhaus and perhaps the most important architect of the modern era, worked in New York and finally in Chicago.
The International Style The 1950’s and 60’s rejected the deco eclectic aesthetic for the straight lines, solid geometry and crisp edges. International style was represented by flat roofs and a “straight forwardness” approach to unconscious style, characterized by egalitarian, pluralist ideals.
Late Modernism 1960’s-1983 A period of “fast track” ubiquitous modern sameness of mega buildings of minimal style and impersonal office tower architecture. It was fueled by the money of corporate America driven by an obsession with speed and overbuilding scale at the expense of design quality. It was the product of “super-sized” architectural firms like Skidmore, Owens & Merrill and Johnson Burgee, who needed to keep the design machines fueled with billions of dollars of construction projects. The attempts to reconcile scale, speed and boredom evolved into a vernacular of exaggerated and articulated “sculpturalism” of the “skin & bones.” The failure of Late Modernism is typified by the supermarket atmosphere of consumption of the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Post-Modernism1977-1990’s Reacting to sameness, the absence of individualism, humanism and the sense of uniqueness of place, Post-Modernism emerged as a hybrid of Modernism and historical reference. Reintroducing Ornamentalism, color and often-exaggerated traditional architectural elements, the architects of the late 70’s and early 80’s evolved a more textural, interesting and humanistic style. Michael Graves, Robert AM Stern, Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi lead a host of other talented designers broke from the machine aesthetic to embrace a style of eclectic historic reference and modern scale. It was a liberating experience for the mid-century modernists universally trained as Miesian disciples.
Contemporary Design 2000-Now Liberated from the constraints of the modern dogma of functionalism and the machine esthetic, today’s contemporary designers reach for new insight from Tech to Tuscan. Contemporary design comes from a spirit of individualism and international influences, from Kenzo to Gehry. Contemporary is eclectic, modern, traditional, expressional, urban, environmental, sculptural, cultural and global. It crosses the traditional boundaries of time and space. It is very much a valid hybrid drawn from the “super-abundant” available information and influences of “The World Village.”
Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle, though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development. Critical Awareness Awareness is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event. Awareness is a relative concept. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjectiveideas about their experience. Insects have awareness that you are trying to swat them or chase after them. But insects do not have consciousness in the usual sense, because they lack the brain capacity for thought and understanding. Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of one's awareness or, self-awareness. Efforts to describe consciousness inneurological terms have focused on describing networks in the brain that develop awareness of the qualia developed by other networks.
Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text.
The Visual Elements of line, shape, tone, color, pattern, texture and form are the building blocks of composition in art. When we analyse any drawing, painting, sculpture or design, we examine these component parts to see how they combine to create the overall effect of the artwork.
The Visual Elements have a relationship to one another:
Most images begin their life as line drawings.
Lines cross over one another to form shapes.
Shapes can be filled with tone and color, or repeated to create pattern.
A shape may be rendered with a rough surface to create a texture.
A shape may be projected into three dimensions to create form.
Each of the elements may also be used individually to stress their own particular character in an artwork. Different elements can express qualities such as movement and rhythm, space and depth, growth and structure, harmony and contrast, noise and calm and a wide range of emotions that make up the subjects of great art.
THE VISUAL ELEMENTS - LINE
Line is the foundation of all drawing. It is the first and most versatile of the visual elements of art. Line in an artwork can be used in many different ways. It can be used to suggest shape, pattern, form, structure, growth, depth, distance, rhythm, movement and a range of emotions.
We have a psychological response to different types of lines:
Curved lines suggest comfort and ease
Horizontal lines suggest distance and calm
Vertical lines suggest height and strength
Jagged lines suggest turmoil and anxiety
The way we draw a line can convey different expressive qualities:
Freehand lines can express the personal energy and mood of the artist
Mechanical lines can express a rigid control
Continuous lines can lead the eye in certain directions
Broken lines can express the ephemeral or the insubstantial
Shape can be natural or man-made, regular or irregular, flat (2-dimensional) or solid (3-dimensional), representational or abstract, geometric or organic, transparent or opaque, positive or negative, decorative or symbolic, colored, patterned or textured.
The Perspective of Shapes: The angles and curves of shapes appear to change depending on our viewpoint. The technique we use to describe this change is called perspective drawing.
The Behaviour of Shapes: Shapes can be used to control your feelings in the composition of an artwork:
Squares and Rectangles can portray strength and stability
Circles and Ellipses can represent continuous movement
Triangles can lead the eye in an upward movement
Inverted Triangles can create a sense of imbalance and tension
Pattern is made by repeating or echoing the elements of an artwork to communicate a sense of balance, harmony, contrast, rhythm or movement.
There are two basic types of pattern in art: Natural Pattern and Man-Made Pattern. Both natural and man-made patterns can be regular or irregular, organic or geometric, structural or decorative, positive or negative and repeating or random.
Natural Pattern: Pattern in art is often based on the inspiration we get from observing the natural patterns that occur in nature. We can see these in the shape of a leaf and the branches of a tree, the structure of a crystal, the spiral of a shell, the symmetry of a snowflake and the camouflage and signalling patterns on animals, fish and insects.
Man-Made Pattern: Pattern in art is used for both structural and decorative purposes. For example, an artist may plan the basic structure of an artwork by creating a compositional pattern of lines and shapes. Within that composition he/she may develop its visual elements to create a more decorative pattern of color, tone and texture across the work.
Texture is the surface quality of an artwork - the roughness or smoothness of the material from which it is made.
We experience texture in two ways: optically (through sight) and physically (through touch).
Optical Texture: An artist may use his/her skillful painting technique to create the illusion of texture. For example, in the detail from a traditional Dutch still life above you can see remarkable verisimilitude (the appearance of being real) in the painted insects and drops of moisture on the silky surface of the flower petals.
Physical Texture: An artist may paint with expressive brushstrokes whose texture conveys the physical and emotional energy of both the artist and his/her subject. They may also use the natural texture of their materials to suggest their own unique qualities such as the grain of wood, the grittiness of sand, the flaking of rust, the coarseness of cloth and the smear of paint.
Ephemeral Texture: This is a third category of textures whose fleeting forms are subject to change like clouds, smoke, flames, bubbles and liquids.
Form is the physical volume of a shape and the space that it occupies.
Form can be representational or abstract.
Form generally refers to sculpture, 3D design and architecture but may also relate to the illusion of 3D on a 2D surface.
Three-Dimensional Form can be modelled (added form), carved (subtracted form) and constructed (built form). It can be created from sculptural materials like clay, wax, plaster, wood, stone, concrete, cast and constructed metal, plastics, resins, glass and mixed media. It may also be kinetic, involving light and movement generated by natural, mechanical and electronic means. More recently the CAD process of 3D printing has be been added to the list of sculptural processes.
Two-Dimensional Form constructs the illusion of 3D in 2D media by a skilful manipulation of the visual elements. Perspective drawing, trompe l'oeil , 3D computer graphics programs and holograms are examples of 2D form.
BALANCE Balance in design is similar to balance in physics A large shape close to the center can be balanced by a small shape close to the edge. A large light toned shape will be balanced by a small dark toned shape (the darker the shape the heavier it appears to be)
GRADATION Gradation of size and direction produce linear perspective. Gradation of of
colour from warm to cool and tone from dark to light produce aerial perspective. Gradation can add interest and movement to a shape. A gradation from dark to light will cause the eye to move along a shape. REPETITION Repetition with variation is interesting, without variation repetition can become monotonous. The five squares above are all the same. They can be taken in and understood with a single glance. When variation is introduced, the five squares, although similar, are much more interesting to look at. They can no longer be absorbed properly with a single glance. The individual character of each square needs to be considered.
If you wish to create interest, any repeating element should include a degree of variation.
CONTRAST Contrast is the juxtaposition of opposing elements eg. opposite colours on the colour wheel - red / green, blue / orange etc. Contrast in tone or value - light / dark. Contrast in direction - horizontal / vertical.
The major contrast in a painting should be located at the center of interest. Too much contrast scattered throughout a painting can destroy unity and make a work difficult to look at. Unless a feeling of chaos and confusion are what you are seeking, it is a good idea to carefully consider where to place your areas of maximum contrast. HARMONY Harmony in painting is the visually satisfying effect of combining similar, related elements. eg.adjacent colours on the colour wheel, similar shapes etc. DOMINANCE Dominance gives a painting interest, counteracting confusion and monotony. Dominance can be applied to one or more of the elements to give emphasis UNITY
Relating the design elements to the the idea being expressed in a painting reinforces the principal of unity.eg. a painting with an active aggressive subject would work better with a dominant oblique direction, course, rough texture, angular lines etc. whereas a quiet passive subject would benefit from horizontal lines, soft texture and less tonal contrast.
Unity in a painting also refers to the visual linking of various elements of the work.
