Thinking about color, contrast, line, and shape

- [Instructor] Composition is the arrangement of the individual components within your design. These components include images, text, shapes, lines, and colors. Of course, the placing of individual components in relation to each other and the screen is important aesthetically, but the location of an object, its proximity to other elements in the design, and its individual properties, can also convey messages. It's important that you consider these meanings and feelings when experimenting with the layout for your designs, as it will effect how the viewer understands your designs. To understand composition, it helps to break it down into individual components, which I refer to as elements. So the basic elements of composition are color, contrast, line, shape, space, motion, and depth, and these are elements that refer to motion graphic design. Obviously, motion and depth are more important in motion graphic design than they would be in print design. So let's look at these one by one. Let's start with color. If we look at the artist's color wheel, we can highlight the primary colors of yellow, red, and blue. Notice that these colors are equidistant on the color wheel. Half way between each of these are the secondary colors. So in between yellow and red, we have orange. In between yellow and blue, we have green. And in between red and blue, we have violet. Now anyone who's mixed artist's colors will know that if you mix red and yellow together, you get orange, and if you mix yellow and blue paint together, you get green, and if you mix red and blue paint together, you get violet, so that's how secondary colors are created. Then we have tertiary colors. Tertiary colors are in between the primaries and the secondaries, and you'll see between yellow and orange, we have YO, standing for yellow-orange. Between Y and G, or yellow and green, we have YG, which stands for yellow-green. So these are are the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Let's have a look at some of the different color schemes that we can use in our designs. We'll start with the complimentary color scheme. Colors opposite to each other on the color wheel are called complimentary colors. Orange and blue are really good colors to experiment with, as it's hard to go wrong with orange and blue. And here, you can see it used in this info graphic. So basically, any colors that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel are complimentary colors, and tend to work well together. The split complimentary scheme uses one secondary color and two tertiary colors that neighbor the color's complimentary opposite. In this case, we have blue, and instead of orange, we have yellow-orange and red-orange. This creates complimentary harmony, but it allows for a little bit more variety than a basic complimentary scheme. Another good color scheme to start with is analogous. Analogous uses three neighboring colors to create variety in color. It's easy to control because the colors are so close to each other on the wheel. If you're really getting started with color and you want a really basic color scheme to use, monochrome uses a single color, along with brightness and saturation, to create a variety of shades and tone variations. It's a great scheme for those who are still building their confidence working with color. Contrast is the state of being different to a comparative element. It can refer to light and shade. It can also refer to black and white, positive and negative space, or even colors. But when used in terms of design, it usually refers to the contrast or difference between light and dark areas. The right side of this image has increased contrast, which makes lighter areas appear brighter and more saturated, while darker areas become even darker. Line is possibly the most fundamental component of the design elements. Here we see an outline that suggests a bat. We don't really need any details to determine the fact it is a bat. Lines can form outlines like this, or they can be used for shadings or patterns. They can be uniform, or they can vary in weight, or be broken dotted lines. Lines are often used to emphasize shapes or to accentuate an edge or a border. The shape of individual objects should be considered when putting together your designs. Shape can result from text blocks, areas of color, shade, or characters within the design. Shapes can also be combined to create more complex shapes. With a complex shape like a cog wheel, rather than draw it from scratch, it's easier to combine shapes together and subtract them from each other to create the finished.