Fundamentals of design Monday March 10, 2008, 2 comments

In a recent post, I started talking about getting back to design. At the end of that post, I briefly touched on design theory. While web design blogs and sites seem to be abuzz lately with talk of design, it is clear that such things inevitably devolve into discussion of the tools web designers use, and the ways these tools limit us. I want to delve deeper into the theory of graphic design – specifically composition – and not get sidetracked by implementation.

According to some schools of thought, composition theory is generally broken down into five fundamentals: Balance, Proportion, Rhythm, Emphasis and Unity. These are core concepts, and pertain directly to the layout of information on a page as much as the application of paint to a canvas, or light to photographic paper.

In addition to these fundamentals, there are Line, Shape, Direction, Texture, Value and Space. These elements fall between the theoretical fundamentals and the practical tools of composition. Thy are methods that designers use to apply the fundamentals.

This exploration of the theories of graphic design will appear in a series of posts, beginning with a look at balance. Some of these posts appeared in rudimentary form on a different website several years ago, but I have never been happy with that initial work, and have substantially edited and expanded it for inclusion on this series.

This series does not herald a change in direction for A Rain of Frogs. This site will continue to be what it has always been, a safety valve for creativity and expression.


Comments

jules Sunday March 23, 2008


Adrian!!!
I love the redesign!!!

Beee-U-tiful!!

Adrian Monday March 24, 2008


Thanks Jules!

I’m pretty fond of it too :)

It’s much more flexible than the older design.

Commenting has ended for this post, but I'd still love to hear from you.

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A Rain of Frogs was written, designed and built by Adrian Lebar, a twenty-five(!) year veteran of web design and development. He is currently managing web and mobile development teams at Canada’s largest and most beloved classifieds site, Kijiji!

He is a father, sailor, snowboarder, skier, cyclist, writer, artist, graphic designer, classically trained musician and afraid of heights.

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A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work.”
- John Gall

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