How to Formal concepts

How to Formal concepts

Those histories matter because the way something looks has always carried meaning. To fully understand that connection, designers first need to be able to look at the world and understand why things look the way they do at a given time, in the past and in the present. From there, they need to be able to put type, forms, and images together and be able to judge whether or not they convey an intended message to the target audience. Then they need to learn how to use these systems of relationships, sometimes articulated as rules or guidelines.

Knowing how to do that requires learning basic layout principles such as balance, rhythm, movement, and proportion, executed through scale, position, value, and color and using line, shape, texture, and space. This skill, also known as composition, is learned through practice, observation, and reflection. Composition can be learned through Gestalt principles like proximity, similarity, closure, simplicity, continuation, segregation, and emergence. Composition is also a foundational skill for illustrators, photographers, and fine artists.

From there, a designer needs to know the relationship between typographic form and meaning, as well as how the arrangement of type, also known as typography, conveys meaning. Like composition, these skills are learned through practice making and evaluating typographic forms and arrangements.

The relationship of typographic form to meaning is constantly changing. Audiences and their visual associations change. An advertisement sparely typeset in Helvetica meant something different in 1960 than it does today. In 1960 it would have signaled a move towards something new and different, whereas now it could even be read as retro, or nostalgic for mid-century modernist aesthetics and ideals. Just as colors are perceived differently in different contexts, forms are read differently depending on what’s around them, what they’re associated with, and how they’ve been used before. Images, too, change meaning depending on what they are viewed with and when they are viewed. A basic understanding of art and design history helps a designer understand and communicate, with shared references, the relationship of form, image, and structure to meaning.

Building these systems of relationships also requires a deep understanding of and control over hierarchy and contrast. Visual hierarchy gives the user or reader a clear understanding of what is most important and least important. Contrast allows that person to distinguish one thing from another. Designing an alphabet is the ultimate exercise in non-hierarchical systems: each letter must be distinguishable from the other, but no letter may be more different than the others, making them all similarly different. For example, in a font the “a” must look clearly different from the “e,” and you need to be able to tell an “i” from an “l.” But if the “w” or the “m” is heavier or bigger than all the other letters, because it calls attention to itself, it makes it harder to stay focused on reading all of the letters and words in the right order. In branding systems, wayfinding systems, advertising campaigns, and books, there are many situations where elements need to be visually the same and others where they need to be clearly different. Designers know how to read, create, and implement these systems, coding the hierarchy into the design.