The first thing we looked at in week 2 is composition. Composition is the arrangement and organization of visual elements in a design. Placement, sizing and alignment of these elements such as text, images and graphics all need to be well thought out and considered to create a strong professional composition.
To start we looked at visual weight which is how much a element in design stands out to grab the viewers attention. To make something in a design stand out you can use scale, color or if its text it could be font, weight or size.
An example of Visual Weight is used on a clothing company I like ‘RSVLTS’ which they use color and scale to draw the users attention to a ‘Finish Checkout’ button when re opening the app after adding a item to your cart. The red button contrasts well with the white background and at first the exit button may not be noticeable. When viewing a item they use the same design for the ‘add to cart button’ as it is a effective design.
Moving on from visual weight we then looked at balance. To balance composition the positive elements and negative space need arranged so that one area does not overpower the others.
This example from ‘antongorlin.com’ gives a clear example of what basic balance looks like. If designs are the same scale as each other you should use even white space throughout however if a design is more ‘powerful’ or larger it is better to move the larger design closer to create balance.
Then we looked at golden ratio which is the ratio between two elements. This is when the length of the larger element is approximately 1.618 times bigger than the smaller element.