The 6 Principles of design:
1.) Repetition: Repetition is defined as “a component that is repeated when other components with features similar to it are arranged in a composition.” Repetition keeps designs unified and consistent. An example of repetition would be something like a shirt with the same pattern used over and over again.
2.) Balance: Balance means that the weights of the visual elements on both sides of some sort of axis are equal. The visual elements can be “mono-symmetric” or “multi-symmetric”. An example would be bathroom signs on doors (a silhouette man on one side and a women on the other).
3,) Proportion/Scale: Proportion/scale is the relationship between objects and their size/visual weight. When using it for size you make an element bigger and that gives it more emphasis. For using visual weight, making a part more bolded makes it look more important.
4.) White Space: White space is the empty space in a design. White space is used more as a background. This leads the foreground imagery to be more prevalent. An example of this is the sky. The sky being the white space making the clouds seem more prevalent.
5.) Contrast: Contrast is used with elements in a composition that have different properties. Such properties could be color, size, weight, shape etc. An example of contrast would be a bunch of green apples with one red apple amongst them.
6.) Emphasis: Very similar to contrast, Emphasis uses elements to highlight a certain part and give importance to it. The example I used of the red apple with all the green apples works here as well.
Gestalt Theory:
The Gestalt Theory also known as gestalt phycology started to take off in Berlin in the 1920s. The point of the gestalt theory is to make sense of how our minds perceive things in whole elements rather then being seen as individual elements. Gestalt psychologists listed the basic principles of visual perception. These principles try to explain how our mind perceives visual components as being part of the same group. The 10 principles are: Simplicity, Figure-Ground, Proximity, Similarity, Common Fate, Symmetry, Continuity, closure, Common Region, and Element Connectedness.
