Design Principles // Exercises : Repetition & Movement

September 20, 2020

Design Principles // Exercises : Repetition & Movement

13/08/20 -20/09/20 (Week 3-Week 4)
Caitlyn Aurelia Tjandra (0339381)/BDCM
Design Principles
Exercises - Repetition and Movement

Lecture

Week 3 (13/09/20): Repetition, Rhythm, and Pattern

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

Fig 1.0

Repetition is simply repeating a single element many times in a design. Repetition can be useful in web and app design. For example, you’d expect the logo of a business to be repeated on every page and in the same place. Menu items are also often repeated in the same place on a page. This helps provide a consistent user experience. By repeating elements, we as designers not only deliver according to our users’ expectations in this way, but we also improve their experience. Our being consistent makes the users more comfortable. Remember that the eye works in a certain way by default. Using repetition to keep the eye familiar with our design’s elements means we’re taking advantage of this tendency. We can also use shapes, colors textures, fonts, etc. to maintain this consistency via repetition.

Fig 1.1

Patterns are simply a repetition of more than one design element working in concert with each other. A seamless pattern is one where every element within a design (no matter how often it’s repeated) combines to form a whole. This is most common in backgrounds on web and app pages. It’s also popular in carpet and wallpaper design.

Fig 1.2

When you repeat elements, the intervals between those repetitions can create a sense of rhythm in the viewer and a sense of movement. Musicians create rhythm in the spacing between notes, effectively making these “silent” gaps play off the notes. Designers insert spacing between elements to the rhythm. There are, broadly speaking, five types of visual rhythm.

Random rhythm

– Repeating elements with no specific regular interval creates random rhythms. The spacing could be a millimeter here, a centimeter there, while the elements could be all over the place.

Regular rhythm

– Like the beating of a heart, the regular rhythm follows the same intervals over and over again. You can easily make a regular rhythm just by creating a grid or a series of vertical lines. The user’s eye will instantly recognize a regular rhythm, scanning it for any irregularities in the process.

Alternating rhythm

– You can repeat more than one element in a design. In an alternating design, you use a 1-2-1-2-1-2 pattern. Think of the black and white squares on a chessboard: that’s an alternating rhythm in play. An alternating rhythm is, in fact, regular rhythm with more complexity

Flowing rhythm

– A flowing rhythm shows the repeated elements following bends, curves, and undulations. In nature, you can see this in the waves on a beach or sand dunes.

Progressive rhythm

– We can make a progressive rhythm simply by changing one characteristic of a motif as we repeat it. We could draw a series of circles, one above the other, making each lower one larger.

Week 3 (13/09/20): Movement

For this week's lecture, Ms. Jinchi also posted a YouTube video and article about the movement that we were required to watch and read.

Movement is the principle of good design which gives the artist control over what the viewer sees next. Using this principle, the artist can create the path our eyes will travel as we look at a work of art.

The movement shows action and creates a feeling of motion within a composition. It also serves as a guide to direct the eye from one element to the next. An artist controls and forces the progression of the viewer’s eyes in and around the composition of the painting using eye travel. For instance, the eye will travel along an actual path such as a solid or dotted line, or it will move along more subtle paths such as from large to smaller elements, from dark to lighter elements, from color to non-color, from unusual to usual shapes, etc.

Movement can also be created by action. In two-dimensional works of art, action must be implied. Implied action in a painting creates life and activity. This is best illustrated by the direction the eye takes along an invisible path created by an arrow, a gaze, or a pointing finger. Action can also be indicated by the “freeze-frame” effect of an object in motion

Instruction

Exercise

Week 4

Repetition:

Research

This week we need to create a design for both repetition and movement design. Our material for this week is pastel and watercolors. For repetition, I wanted to design a theme of the current era, which is a digital era. Nowadays, people, especially teenagers, tend to focus on what they see online rather than physical interaction. Therefore, I wanted to convey that image in my design. Firstly, I did my research on Pinterest and in the end, compiled it into one mood-board.

Fig 2.0 mood board Pinterest compilation

After figuring out what is repetition from watching the lecture video and article. Additionally also researching from Pinterest and see what other artist has done for repetition and having inspiration for my drawing, I then continue to sketch my ideas digitally.

Exploration

For my sketches, I did it digitally on my iPad. using the app procreate I was able to sketch many ideas I had in my head. Firstly, for repetition, since I had the theme beforehand which is the digital era, I wanted to make a design that has relation to problem nowadays which is social media and racism. Therefore here are my sketches:

Fig 2.1 Bubbles

At first, I did a trial in using pastel since I haven't used pastel in my whole life. I did a repetition of bubbles in a reminder of our childhood days before electronics exist. However, I thought that this sketch doesn't have much impact, therefore I just did it for a trial run.

Fig 2.2 Burst of likes

This sketch was inspired by my initial theme which is the digital era. This design reflects people these days where we all cared only about the number of likes that we had on social media and how other people are much more competent than ourselves. although, in reality, perhaps the other person uses editing apps that change their photo drastically.

Fig 2.3 Diversity

This is a repetition of hands that has a different type of skins. This is because racism has been the problem nowadays and people have been categorized there's by categories of their skins. I made the hand stacked up into angel wings. This is because we need the freedom we used to have. No matter what type of skin we have, we need to be treated equally.

After doing several sketches, It's finally time for the next class which we will have our feedback from our lecturer Ms. Jinchi.

Final Design

After receiving feedback from Ms. Jiinchi I did several reworks on my design. This is the final result of my design:

Fig 2.4 Final Rework 'reaching for likes'

For this design, I did a little rework from the initial design. What I've done is combining the two sketches of my design, the fig 2.2 and 2.3. I used the diversity hands in 2.3 and change the composition so it looks as if they are reaching for something. after that, I did a burst of likes on top of that, which looks as if they are reaching for the likes. This is perfect for my theme as this resembles how everyone ( every skin, every people) has been obsessing on likes.

Final Outcome

Fig 2.5 Process

Fig 2.6 Final Outcome

Fig 2.7 Other Views 1

Fig 2.8 Other Views 2