CHAPTER 1
COMPOSITION
Overview
Introduction
The greatest power of visual language lies in its immediacy. You see content
and form simultaneously. Properly developed and composed, visual messages
enter the brain directly without conscious decoding, translating, or delay.
The
message conveyed is not only a direct result of your ability to orderly arrange
the elements or visual syntax in a composition, but also the receiver’s ability to
perceive, or his level of visual literacy. Your manipulation of negative and
positive space, tonal patterns, and implied spatial relationships as elements on a
page is an intellectual problem-solving process. The cerebral process of
generalities without concrete rules that compose abstract visual syntax is a
uniquely human ability the computer has not yet mastered. Effective
compositions require understanding the dynamics of visual patterns and how
we see, organize, and define those elements intellectually, emotionally, and
mechanically.
Objectives
The material in this chapter enables you to do the following:
Understand the importance of developing comprehensive thumbnail
sketches.
Differentiate between formal and informal arrangements.
Use the elements of design to create disturbing or discordant compositions.
Use the elements of design to create balanced and pleasing compositions.
Understand the difference between color and tonal compositions.
Recognize the implications of the compositional elements of one-, two-, and
three-point perspective drawings.
Use composition advantageously in technical drawings or blueprints.
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