Learn about the concept of design spaces.
- [Instructor] When we talk about a design space, we're talking about the area in which we are working, and I'm not talking about your desk and your chair. I'm talking about whether it's a page, or a spread, or a banner, or a screen, or any other kind of thing that you're designing on. There are a number of ways that we can divide that up before we begin putting anything onto it. Let's just have a look at a few different ways that we might divide things up, and some of the theories around page or design space division.
Let's start off by looking at photography because photography for a long time has employed something called the rule of thirds, and, in fact, so has classical art. A way of dividing the image up into nine different sections, all in thirds. You can treat each section itself as a design environment. Typically, the horizon would have been aligned along the bottom third, although sometimes for an extreme event or if you're perhaps doing a landscape, it would be the top third.
Anywhere apart from the middle because that's the bit that's really boring if it looks too symmetrical. You can use the intersections of the lines as points of interest as well. You can align either directly on them or, as is the case here, towards them. Another theory is that of the golden section and the golden spiral or the Fibonacci spiral. That may help you create a pleasing layout. You can see here how this layout of the area within the margins conforms to a golden spiral layout.
When you're dealing with things like banners, for example, that's a completely different design environment in which the spiral isn't readily accommodated as a whole, but there's nothing to stop you dividing it into sections. You could take an easier approach though and use something like columns, as has been done here. These are pretty much squares as they go out, and you could subdivide those also to help you position other elements. That way you'll get a nice proportioned layout for whatever environment you're working in.
On pages, there's lots and lots of theory around those, but again the system you're most likely to use is based on columns. It's quite common to subdivide those so that you get flow lines across the page, just to help you divide things up nicely. All great design starts that way, by dividing up the design space before you start thinking about the positioning of elements, which is what we're doing in the next movie.
Author
Released
2/27/2018- The creative process
- Layout and composition
- Grids
- Typography
- Color
- Transforming images and assets in Photoshop
- Drawing logos in Illustrator
- Designing graphics and documents in InDesign
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 52s
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What is graphic design?1m 40s
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1. The Creative Process
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The creative brief1m 35s
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Research54s
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Ideation2m 41s
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Production2m 21s
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2. Layout and Composition
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The design space2m 50s
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Principles of layout2m 30s
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Grids1m 57s
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Exercise: Layout analysis1m 16s
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3. Typography
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The language of type2m 18s
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Type terminology3m 4s
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Type anatomy4m 41s
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Basic type classifications4m 47s
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Ligatures2m 17s
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Type measurement1m 59s
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Text elements: Character8m 4s
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Text elements: Paragraph6m 32s
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Selecting type4m 35s
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Basic typography guidelines6m 41s
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Type crimes4m 59s
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4. Color
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Color components3m 32s
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Monochrome and temperature3m 24s
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Color harmonies4m 23s
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RGB and CMYK4m 48s
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Process and spot colors4m 37s
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Color associations1m 19s
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Color blindness2m 51s
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5. Photoshop
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Photoshop quick start tour4m 14s
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Selectively changing colors4m 45s
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Cropping an image3m 24s
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6. Illustrator
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Illustrator quick start3m 18s
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Importing a rough sketch6m 7s
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Drawing the logo6m 20s
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Creating a color theme5m 44s
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Using the Touch Type tool3m 32s
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Creative Cloud libraries6m 40s
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7. InDesign
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InDesign quick start tour1m 54s
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Creating a new document1m 43s
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Working with master pages6m 53s
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Importing text into InDesign5m 58s
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Creating tables in InDesign7m 58s
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Finalizing the design5m 37s
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Conclusion
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Recommended courses1m 10s
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Video: The design space