Angel Larson
Space on its own is neutral or inactive until it is broken up by form. Just like a document starts as a blank white rectangle, the addition of type creates new shapes and blank spaces that change how we as viewers see and interpret the information. Usage of space must be handled intentionally by the designer to aid in the message and make things easier to interpret for the viewer.
When designing 2D layouts, it is important to create a sense of depth and movement with shapes and forms, so that the composition appears more dynamic. When arranging forms, a designer should consider using a symmetrical or asymmetrical layout. Symmetry occurs in a layout when both halves reflect over a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal central axis. Symmetry can occur around a single axis or multiple different axes at a time. Symmetrical layouts may not always be the best course for a design, as they may come off as static, boring, or too repetitive in many cases. Asymmetry relies on proportional relationships in shape and space to balance out the composition. Asymmetrical designs may appear more natural, as many forms in the natural world are not symmetrical.
The structure of forms in space affects the viewer’s perception and meaning that they interpret from a design composition. There are many different structural relationships that you can achieve by placing forms by each other with consideration to the space between them, the angles of the forms, the sizes of the forms, and the shapes they are creating. Arrangements of forms can be perceived as geometric, organic, rigid, or irregular. Very complex layouts can have hundreds or thousands of different individual shapes, forms, structures, and meanings. For example, in a magazine cover, there might be a person on the cover. We recognize a person as a person, but they are also built up of thousands of different smaller shapes and parts that create a whole that we can visually understand. The same could be said about type. Each letter and shape holds its own meaning, and when combined, letters become words that we can understand when certain letters are placed together.
Proportional relationships have to do with controlling eye movement through establishing recognizable, repeated intervals. The rule of thirds splits the space in a composition into thrirds, vertically and horizontally. The rationale is that our eyes will focus on the points where the composition splits into thirds. Musical logic establishes different repeated intervals that can be used to make a layout make more sense to the viewer. For example, in this paper, the space between the lines of type is all the same. The height of the ascenders of the letters to the decender of the letters is also the same.
The margins are also the same on each side. The height and width of a capital T in this paper are all the same. This creates a logic that makes the shapes and sizes make more sense across the layout. Mathematical logic creates a fractional relationship between elements in a composition to each other. For example in zoo maps, the shapes and sizes of the elements of the map are shrunken down from the real world but are still proportional. The paths are more narrow than the buildings, and the spaces the aimals are in are much larger than the buildings. Having this sense of forms being proportional to each other makes the map more realistic and understandable to the real world. The golden section creates a point of focus by breaking down a composition proportionally. The composition can be broken down repeatedly into a larger section and a smaller section. This appears to create a spiral shape downward.
Depth can be created in a composition by using varying sizes of shapes, overlapping shapes, using transparency, and making shapes bleed past the constraints of the format. Depth in a layout mirrors the real world and creates a more dynamic composition that appears more 3D. We can create the illusion with shape and space that we are looking off into the distance, that some shapes are popping out at you, that the shapes on the page are part of the real world, or that we are looking through a shape to see another. Movement can be created with shape and space to create a desirable eye flow and give life to a composition.
Using a large amount of blank space around a shape can actually be helpful to direct your eyes to the shape faster, show contrast, and emphasize a form. It’s very insightful to learn so much about shape and space and how we as designers can use their unique relationships to our advantage. Shape and space are a natural part of the physical world and can be reflected into our designs to communicate the message we would like the viewer to interpret in our designs.
1.) Symmetrical
(Photo screenshotted from my Instagram. I do not own this material and am using it for informational purposes only.)
This ad is symmetrical across the horizontal and vertical axes. It is not a completely perfect reflection, but the elements across from each other take up about the same amount of space and are about the same shapes as well, with exception to the orange background. The symmetry of the elements helps the ad to balance out the space. Because the elements aren’t exactly the same across the horizontal and vertical axes, it helps to keep the layout from being too boring or repetitive.
2.) Asymmetrical
(Photo screenshotted from my Instagram. I do not own this material and am using it for informational purposes only.)
This ad is asymmetrical but is a well-balanced composition. Top Felton is not looking at the camera straight on; his head is tilted to the right. His head being tilted to the right balances out with “Beyond the Wand,” being tilted towards the left. It is also balanced out by having larger text on the left,
“THE MAGIC & MAYHEM OF GROWING UP A WIZARD,” while the quote on the right, “A brilliant memoir about growing up playing an iconic role,” is much smaller. This is because the way Tom Felton is positioned in the frame, there is more open space on the left than the right, so the text must be different sizes so that they fit into the space better.
3.) Structure
(Photo screenshotted from my Instagram. I do not own this material and am using it for informational purposes only.)
This ad has a few different structural relationships that I noticed right away when I saw it. The first is that the colored boxes are stacked on top of each other. They are not touching, but all the boxes are the same size and shape and have the same amount of space between them. This helps to lead your eye down the stack of boxes from top to bottom. The colored boxes also correlate with the multi-colored wheel. The colored sections of this wheel form a circular structure. This helps the viewer understand that the different sections are all part of a whole circle and that they represent a numerical fraction of the whole. The overlapping structure of the color wheel and colored boxes being on top of the map in the background, also ties in the idea that the DNA is measured from different parts of the world.
4.) Depth
(Photo screenshotted from my Instagram. I do not own this material and am using it for informational purposes only.)
This ad uses various methods to establish depth within the format, including overlapping forms, transparency, varying sizes, and bleeding past the bounds of the format. Most of the depth comes from the picture that was used, but there is also a sense of depth created with the use of the text. The text appears to be in the foreground, closest to the viewer, because the red rectangle that the text sits on is in front of the picture. The picture bleeds off the format on the left and right sides. The picture could have had a border or space left around it, but because it goes all the way to the edge of the ad, it is as if you could image the rest of the studio that we cannot see. The lady in the middle is bigger than the ladies on the sides; this tells the viewer that she is closer to you than the other ladies. You can also see through the windows in the background, giving you a view of the world beyond the photo. This photo exhibits how we can create shapes and forms in space to mimic the real world. In the real world, we are always seeing depth, so it is only natural to recreate this in our designs.
5.) Proportion
(Photo screenshotted from my Instagram. I do not own this material and am using it for informational purposes only.)
This ad utilizes proportion by using the rule of thirds, mathematical logic, and musical logic in the composition. The composition is split vertically into three sections when it comes to the visuals and information under the visuals. “Joan of Arc,” “Richard the Lionheart,” and “Marco Polo” are all on top of boxes that are the same width. This composition uses mathematical logic with the graphics of people by making their heads and bodies the same size. Because they are at the same level of depth, it makes sense for them to be proportionally the same size. Musical logic is used in this composition by the established repeated sizes of the shapes and spaces in-between shapes. The rectangles behind the type are all the same distance from each other from the bottom to the top and from the left to the right sides. The names are all the same size, and the information about the people is the same size of type. The text is also inset to the same amount within each box with text. This musical logic makes the composition easier to read and makes more sense to the viewer.