Design Principles // Exercises : Harmony & Unity

September 27, 2020

Design Principles // Exercises : Harmony & Unity

20/09/20 -27/09/20 (Week 4-Week 5)

Caitlyn Aurelia Tjandra (0339381)/BDCM
Design Principles
Exercises - Repetition and Movement

Lecture

Week 4 (20/09/20): Harmony

For this week's lecture Ms. Jinchi post to us a YouTube video link and two articles for us to watch and read. I read the article first and here is what I understood from it.

Harmony is the visually satisfying effect of combining similar or related elements.

- Adjacent colors

- Similar shapes

- Related textures

Harmony in a painting or design helps bring about unity. All harmony and no contrast, however, can become monotonous. A balance must be struck between areas of harmony and areas of contrast.

In the painting below the harmonious, repeating rectangles are relieved by the contrasting round forms of the pots and flowers. The overall warm color harmony is given relief by the cool green shutters. Grouping the subordinate, contrasting organic shapes reinforces the focal point.

Fig 1.0 Harmony

By keeping the area of contrast smaller than the large harmonious area to be relieved, a visually satisfying balance is achieved. Understatement is usually better – sometimes just a tiny contrasting mark is all that is needed.

A limited palette will keep a tight color harmony. Tonal contrast then becomes the main tool for emphasizing a focal point.
In this mixed media painting below, a limited palette ensures a tight color harmony. Strong tonal contrast in the upper right-hand side of the shoe, and a protruding, frayed shoelace establish an off-center focal point, breaking the symmetry of the subject.

Week 5 (23/09/20): Unity

For this week's lecture Ms. Jinchi post to us a YouTube video link and two articles for us to watch and read. I read the article first and here is what I understood from it.

The idea behind the design component unity is to create elements that support each other and all work together toward a common goal. It’s about avoiding mixed messages. Your design elements should look like they belong together and not be arbitrarily placed on the page.

There are two kinds of unity we’re concerned with:

Visual unity – for example, a group of elements all aligned to a common axis
Conceptual unity – for example, an image of a diamond, a mansion, and a pile of money might be unified around the concept of wealth

Unity is a measure of how well the elements on the page belong together. Through unity, a viewer should first see the whole and then the sum of the parts making that whole.

Fig 1.1 Unity

Unity holds your design together both visually and conceptually. It emphasizes your concept and theme and helps communicate your message to your reader. Through unity, your elements aren’t competing with each other for attention. They are working together to reinforce your message. Through unity, your design will be, seen as a single complete piece, as a whole and not a group of disparate parts.

Instruction

Exercise

Week 5

Harmony:

Research

This week, as usual, we were assigned to make two design which is harmony and unity. For this excercise, we were assigned the material acrylic and poster paint.

I wanted to incorporate a theme that fits perfectly for both design principles. I went with 'Teamwork'. In teamwork, we need both harmony and unity. For harmony, I did research on Pinterest beforehand. I searched the keyword teamwork and picked out several images that would resemble harmony perfectly. Then, I compiled them in a mood board.

Fig 1.2 Mood board Pinterest Compilation

After creating a mood board I was able to see the type of design I wanted to do. For harmony, I could see a repetition of hands and puzzle pieces in which I want to insert into my design. I thought of a pattern like a design for harmony since many people usually did a pattern or line design. I thought I would love to do that for this week's designs.

Exploration

For my sketches, I did a usual digital design on procreates. Firstly, since I already had planned what I wanted to do, I went straight away into designing a hand and puzzle pieces. I want my design to be unique, therefore, for the design pieces, I did a redesign of the classic puzzle and hand design.

Fig 1.3 People Puzzle

For this design, I came up with the idea of having a puzzle pattern. However, I wanted to add a style in which I incorporate puzzles and a person. I detached the puzzle head and turn it into a circle, to look like a real head which makes the puzzle piece as a body. This correlates to the theme of teamwork, as people are each of the individual pieces and when you put the pieces together it will connect and become a whole new image.

Fig 1.4 Hand Print

For this design, I wanted to incorporate a handprint. I did a scar that looks like the hand's vein. I also incorporate a diversity of the skin color which evokes a sense of diversity as well as racism. This design tells a message of how we need every one of every color skin to connect together to get something done. We need the whole world effort, not just one culture.

Final Design

After feedback from ms Jinchi, she told me she is fine with either of them. Although, if I wanted to choose the hand one I need to fix it. Therefore, I wanted to see first, how the hand would look like and then picked from there. Here is the fixed hand design:

Fig 1.5 Fixed handprints

I definitely liked this design. However, In this pandemic era, I need to also consider my supply availability. Since in my place there are currently a high amount of people having cover-19, I can't go outside and buy the material needed. I use the paint that I currently had, which is acrylic paint. The color that I had was the classic primary color which means I was unable to create a skin tone color. Therefore, my final design would be the puzzle piece.

Fig 1.6 Final Work 'Puzzle People'

Final Outcome

Fig 1.7 First Attempt Failed

Fig 1.8 Other views

Fig 1.9 Other views

Fig 2.0 Final Outcome 'Puzzle People'