From the course: Graphic Design Tips & Tricks
Find your balance
From the course: Graphic Design Tips & Tricks
Find your balance
- Things in real life, objects, people, pretty much everything, are inherently balanced. If they weren't, they'd be falling over. The laws of physics don't apply to graphic design, but when we see a page, we tend to feel it like we do in real life. The Gestalt term for this is isomorphic correspondence. And because of that, we tend to prefer designs that are in balance. So I'd like to take a quick look at the two primary kinds of balance. We all intuitively get that the teeter-totter is balanced, and that if we add a weight to one end, it's now imbalanced, and adding a counterweight restores the balance. This balance is symmetrical, each side is essentially a mirror of the other, and what that looks like in practice could be this. This poster is balanced symmetrically. The right side is almost a mirror image of the left. Equal weight on each side of the setter, equally distributed. This has several attributes, balance-wise it's static, there's no movement, it's like that teeter-totter. Nothing's pushing or pulling you in any direction, there's just that nice, calm setter. The type is placid too, it's all one typeface, Minion Pro, nothing in bold, and the smallest type is not much smaller than the biggest type, so there's not the tension you get when one thing is huge and another thing is tiny. The color contrasts are also low, very light against the neutral field, so the edges are soft. The colors are very gray, de-saturating your colors like this. De-saturated, meaning the colors are not colorful, is very calming. The opposite would be fire engine red. So the symmetry here, plus the low contrasts, makes a poster that supports the image. It's placid, it's contemplative, it's meditative. The design supports the idea of finding your balance. Back to the teeter-totter, there's also asymmetrical balance, we've all experienced that. The heavier object needs to be closer to the center to be balanced by the lighter object. Let's abstract this by removing the ground and the board, which gives us this. This is pretty cool, this is a composition in balance, although it's asymmetrical, the two sides are not the same. How does the yoga poster look now? Try this. Let me first give credit to my friend Maya Lim, put the P in there, Maya P. Lim who designed this. I like it a lot, it's complex, it's nuanced, and it's balanced. Before I go further, let me add one more variable and that's that a small object will balance a large object in equal distance from the center if the two objects weigh the same. The thing, a thing can be bigger but lighter, which is what we see on the poster. Her pose is all askew, but she's obviously balancing. Her center of balance runs through her shoulder. We're seeing skewed lines here, which are reflected in skewed lines here. The headline and the deck head setting is active, it's not passively centered. Active, meaning it forces our eyes to move. All of it is hovering over the vertical bar in contrast to it but part of it. And all of the type and layout work to counterbalance her. That's assymetry. So here's a question, of these two balanced designs, one symmetrical, one asymmetrical, which one would you pick? Well, that's going to depend on what you're trying to do. It's a week-long yoga workshop titled, Finding Your Balance. We've already seen that the symmetrical poster conveys a sense of tranquility, literally of centeredness, which is one of the tenants of the week. The stillness of this suggests that the focus will be cerebral on your interior state, on your mindfulness. The asymmetrical poster is balance with tension. To my mind, it conveys the idea that the process, the process of finding your balance is an active one. It requires involvement and effort and some stress, it's not something that passively happens to you. There's vigor and challenge and demand involved. You're out to find balance. However, I showed this poster to a live audience, and a fairly large percentage were uncomfortable with it. Her pose is clearly athletic and beyond the ability of most people, and they were kind of put off by that. This is a workshop they would not want to attend. That wasn't everyone, others were energized, they took the poster as a challenge, as an invitation to go further, to do more, all that. An active pursuit of personal transformation with effort. So, there you go. A look at what balance can do. Balance is a primary design tool, something you deal with on every page. We'll cover this topic again, and that's your design for today, see you next time.
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Contents
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Design a modern cover: Think simple, clean, and angular3m 22s
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Transform a product sheet: Put your words here, not there3m 1s
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Design a business card: Make it look like what it says4m 40s
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Double your artwork for free: Use the same picture twice3m 49s
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Design a ghosted logo: A picture always goes with itself5m 39s
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Design a business card using repetitive shape4m 38s
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Why round letters are bigger than straight ones1m 49s
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Design a powerful poster: Work with your photo, not against it7m 13s
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Design stationery that’s almost a brochure: Picture your product, not your logo7m 42s
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Alignment: Your ruler’s good only for regular things4m 32s
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Logo design: Think simple3m 40s
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Your design needs a focal point: Dramatic photo anchors a strong makeover8m 5s
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Chart your data with images2m 26s
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Make a beautiful logo with off-the-shelf type3m 30s
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How to transfer your look to a new format13m 55s
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Angles4m 52s
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The (very!) versatile art of the silhouette8m 14s
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Easy, functional one-line design6m 30s
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Signage: Consistency makes the brand7m 59s
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Elementals: How black, white, and gray make depth2m 43s
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A beautiful desk calendar you can make yourself9m 28s
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Lesson of the counterintuitive logo5m 24s
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How to design visual instructions5m 42s
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Design a beautiful CD package9m 7s
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Simple brochure presents your face to the public2m 37s
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Soften the edge2m 49s
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Small layout packs a big punch6m 59s
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Shape it: Part one6m 52s
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Shape it: Part two4m
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A logo makeover: Part one5m 3s
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A logo makeover: Part two5m 22s
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Grid collage3m 8s
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People in a group on a grid5m 24s
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Magazine cover redesign4m 33s
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Designing cards with type alone7m 7s
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Designing a small-space advertisement4m 11s
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Designing a business card for a photographer5m 17s
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Designing names with type and basic shapes4m 17s
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Review of an outdoor sign logo7m 58s
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Creating a small multipage brochure9m 21s
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Designing with black, white, and gray5m 19s
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Gestalt techniques: Isomorphism6m 40s
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Redesigning a business card7m 48s
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How to put motion on a static page11m 59s
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The color wheel6m 36s
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Layout decision points5m 3s
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Designing a tiny brochure3m 53s
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Panoramic spacing3m 23s
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Multi-use format for a business card7m 57s
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The boring book cover challenge: Part 17m 31s
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The boring book cover challenge: Part 24m 21s
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The single space practice5m 1s
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Incorporating hairlines into your design4m 22s
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Close enough with color choice4m 39s
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More design techniques with grids4m 35s
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Lanzarote calendar assignment4m 11s
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Foreground focal point2m 58s
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Stop, look, observe3m 50s
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Working with a rule of thumb (dynamic) grid8m 24s
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The humble power of negative space9m 37s
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Go with the flow9m 52s
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Learning by doing11m 43s
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For the love of design!4m 7s
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The boring book cover challenge, part 35m 50s
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Bold moves5m 6s
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Simply beautiful4m 51s
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Common but versatile looks5m 37s
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Audacious philanthropy5m 50s
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Simple slides12m 48s
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Every face has a place5m 8s
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Those little extras1m 53s
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Seeing sight lines13m 34s
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Swiss style grids, part 15m 26s
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Swiss style grids, part 26m 54s
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Poetic type5m 20s
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Visual continuity4m 53s
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Find your balance5m 25s
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Procrastiworking with album covers10m 21s
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Looking around: Why it works4m 17s
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Don't fake it2m 3s
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Find the focal point6m 5s
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Tooth and texture8m 35s
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Small and simple5m 37s
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Design challenge: Dino Water3m 36s
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Looking around: Address the audience2m 52s
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Experimenting with borders5m 20s
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Magazine layout triple threat5m 48s
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Product ad comparison4m 5s
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Lanzarote calendar assignment: Revisited5m 24s
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Rewind: Simply beautiful4m 59s
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Rewind: Seeing sight lines13m 33s
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Find your center with typefaces4m 59s
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Maki poster, part 15m 40s
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Maki poster, part 26m 35s
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Quick look: Decoded wallet case1m 2s
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A type of luxury2m 32s
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Quick look: Saltwater restaurant1m 15s
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Quick look: Nick's Cove1m 1s
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Less is more: Book covers5m 22s
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Less is more: Notices5m 25s
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Less is more: Posters4m 44s
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Movement in design4m 16s
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The British Academy: Logo4m 36s
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The British Academy: Type3m 48s
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The British Academy: Grid4m 45s
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Quick look: Teavana rock sugar53s
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Ask John: Authentic advice2m 33s
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Blue Note: Donald Byrd album cover3m 50s
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Blue Note: Caddy Daddy, Part 14m 45s
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Blue Note: Caddy Daddy, Part 24m 28s
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Blue Note: Caddy Daddy, Part 33m 56s
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Ask John: Finding your passion2m 41s
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It's all in the details: Lineweights1m 49s
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Paper flyer redesign4m 6s
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Set a headline with Gossamer3m 54s
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Ask John: New business logo1m 52s
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A new type: Helvetica Now5m 48s
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In detail: Line values2m
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Typographic silence6m 46s
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Rebranded: Uber4m 6s
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Capture connection with authenticity5m 27s
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