Design elements basics

design elements basics

Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Space.

Good designers use a set of elements to put across ideas, influence the mind of the viewers to buy products, to react to a message, to balance the mood in a man made environment. 

In nature there are five elements that are fire, air, earth, water and space. There has to be balance with these elements for healthy living of human beings.

Same way in design there are six elements which, when used effectively can make your design reach to the desired audience more effectively. The are collectively called elements of design. They are:

Point . Line . Shape . Texture . Colour . Space.

Now let us elaborate on each of them.

Point

Point serves as the focus of something visual, and therefore draws attention to it. Point is a "full stop". Point has no length or breadth. This element is used extensively in languages, where at the end of the sentence a point is put, indicating the viewer to stop and then proceed to start on a new sentence.

Line 

When two points are connected a line is formed. A line has got length and breadth. A line can be horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal. Lines convey messages. 

Line, visual element of design

Example :  Horizontal Lines drawn in white near traffic intersections becomes zebra crossings.

Example : A small horizontal line drawn in math's can indicate subtraction symbol. Same way multiplication sign, addition sign are all lines. Without which calculations in math's becomes difficult. 

Designers use lines in creating textile designs, lines are used to create perspective, composition in drawings . Lines can be wavy, thick, thin, long short. Which ever way it is used lines depict movement. Lines also convey message as given in the above examples.

Shapes

Shapes, Elements of design

A shape is a two dimensional object. It can be a squares, triangles, rectangles, circles.Shapes are drawn using lines and they are closed figures. A shape can live in different areas in space, and have other elements like line, color, texture, or movement. From prehistoric times shapes have been used to draw simple visual pictures by the artists to depict their lifestyles.

Examples: Warli art (India). Aboriginal art (Australia).

Colour

Colour is one of the most important design elements. It is through colour many people make judgement on what to buy.  Appropriate colours influences are mind and mood in our daily life.  A simple definition of colour is, the perceivable characteristic of light, light is energy, so color is a form of energy. 

 Space

This element means a boundary within and around or above and below an object. This also can be defined as the area used by the artist in placing their designs in a given boundary in such away that it attracts the viewers attention towards it. This is done by combining other elements like colour, shapes, lines, typography.

This is a brief introduction to basic meaning of design elements. Using each element individually one can create beautiful designs. This is for school level theory. A simple art portfolio can be made using these elements in the school. So here watching the video you will get ideas to make art portfolio using  elements of design.

 

Texture

Texture is defined as the physical feel of something — smooth, rough, fuzzy, grainy surface.  In design element texture is defined as bringing the visual feel of smoothness, roughness or blurred effect on two dimensional surface. Here the artist, the designer have to manually draw this. For an art student drawing this textures on a two dimensional surface is a great art exercise to train their sense of feeling and vision motor skills. 

In the given video have a look how textures can be drawn on a two dimensional paper. After you have learnt Textures you can apply it in designing, photography and illustrations. 

Related topic : Basics Art facts