8659-designprinciples

[8659-designprinciples]

Design Principles Module 3.1 - Color Composition

[8659-designprinciples]

Design Principles Module 2.2 - Tessellation

[8659-designprinciples]

Design Principles Module 2.1 - Gestalt Principles

These are the 5 Gestalt principles used in design. In this module I will be explaining how they have significance to the graphic design work of M.C. Escher.

Image 1: The Tower of Babel, 1928

Image 2: Snakes . Escher demonstrates the gestalt principle of closure by encircling the tall white building in the foreground with the contrasting black buildings in the background. This serves to cement the white tower as the primary figure in this image as it creates a distinction between subject and background. Even though the water in the background shares the same color as the tower, the direction of the lines on the river in comparison to those seen on the tower are facing completely different directions. This makes the river distinguishable from the tower whilst also allowing it to contribute to the closure principle.

Image 2: Snakes, 1969

The primary focus for this image is the gestalt principle of continuity. Escher constructed this patterned image so that all the lines either meet an end point either by terminating at a certain point like the snakes or looping back on themselves like the green rings forming a pattern.

Image 3: Plane Filling, 1951

In this image M.C. Escher employs the gestalt principle of figure and ground. By correctly utilizing negative space, Eschar can create entirely new shapes out of the white spaces adjacent to the pre-existing black shapes.

[8659-designprinciples]

Design Principles Module 1.1 - Typography

Likes:

I picked “Narrow Roads” as a font that I personally like as each letter appears as though it originates from a stem while still maintaining consistent and legible. A good example of this would be the “O” which is so compressed it looks like 2 stems joint together despite being comprised of a bowl and a counter. This creates a unique shape that remains consistent with the style of the rest of the font.  

Midnight Memories is a font I like because of its aesthetic appeal. As a digital artist I find myself using a textured pen brush for most of my linework as it is what I find the most appealing. The font looks like how I ink my work digitally while remaining both consistent and legible due to its spacing between letters, which is probably a large reason as to why I’m drawn to it.

The last font I chose to put in this section is “Cubest”. Usually I don’t find thick and bold fonts appealing due to their lack of legibility as it almost feels as if every letter is vying for your attention. However, the wide spacing between the letters and consistent counter and eye shapes largely remedy this problem for me.

Dislikes:

I picked Amsyong Moment as a font that I don’t particularly like as it falls into the classic script font trap of being fancy that it hampers its legibility. The crossbars in this script are a bit hard to follow as they are relatively inconsistent among the font.

XXX THIRTY is a font that I’m not keen on for the same reasons that I usually don’t like bold and overbearing fonts. It feels like every letter is vying for my attention and makes the text more straining to read then it needs to be. I also don’t particularly like the aesthetic of this font overall.

Finally, the last font I dislike is “Stuck with you”. Overall, I find the aesthetic of the font quite appealing, however It has one glaring problem. The arms on the font are way too small to the point where the only way I can really differentiate the “t” letters the from “l” letters are through sentence context.