Design Principles | Repetition, Movement, Hierarchy, Alignment

📅 WEEK 3 - 4 : 16.04.2021 - 23.04.2021 

Lee Shu Wei 0345494 
Design Principles Weekly Exercise 3 : Repetition, Movement, Hierarchy, Alignment.

📑 LECTURE

    This week, we learned about repetition, movement, hierarchy and alignment. Before the lecture, I used to confuse repetition with movement, rhythm and pattern. After Dr. Jinchi's explanation, I now understand that they might be confusing because variety of design principles can be exist at the same time in a design. 

    Repetition creates rhythm and pattern, and it can be achieved by using repetition of shapes, lines, colours or other elements. It reminds me of my own design from my previous semester:

Figure 1.1: My previous design as a sample for repetition

This is a memorable design for me as I traced all the details from zero to this final outcome by using Illustrator. I intentionally created the plastic bags in repetition as the background, to bring out the message that a reusable storage bag can safe thousands of plastic bags.

    Next, movement can be explained as the path that our eyes follow. It occurs when objects seem to be moving in a design. Figure 1.2 at below is a design sample I found to explain about movement.

Figure 1.2: Yellow Manual Creative Branding Poster Example by Venngage
( https://www.pinterest.com/pin/769974867521075629/ )

    As usual, Dr. Jinchi introduced us another 2 knowledge, hierarchy and alignment, which are essential for design. I am familiar with both as in communication studies, I need to apply both effectively and efficiently in creating magazines, newspapers, posters, UI design a and more. To explain this better, hierarchy means the priority of the overall design, meaning what you want the viewers to see at the first place, and then navigates it to secondary content. Alignment is to create a sense of unity and cohesion. It can be achieved by imagining invisible lines to categorize things, and make the overall design neat and comfortable to see. 

Figure 1.3: Apple official website as example to explain for hierarchy and alignment
( https://www.apple.com/my/ )

The colourful phones with the bolded and large sized of "iPhone 12" is the hierarchy of the UI design. From that, it leads viewers to the secondary content which is the "Learn more>" and "Buy>" in blue. It successfully serve and achieve its purpose, as viewers know what to do based on his or her purpose. Besides, alignment can be found at the navigation bar, as all the categories are aligned in a common row neatly. 

My personal hand-written notes:

Figure 1.4: My personal written-notes

💡 INSTRUCTION

💭 EXERCISE 3

This week, we are required to create two designs, one for repetition, one for movement. The materials required are water colours or pastels, with A4 paper. I am going to produce both of the designs by using water colours. 

Here I go to Pinterest again, with my empty brain of unsure what to do at the moment. Thanks to the algorithms, tons of fruits appeared because of me searching fruits for previous exercise. The images shown on Pinterest homepage shows lots of examples for repetition, at the same time it reminds me of Dr. Jinchi's explanation for open and closed composition. 

Figure 2.1: "Kiwi Pattern Watercolour" by Hannah Clark
(An Example for Closed Composition)
( https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1103452346169540764/ )

Figure 2.2: Kiwi Fruit Wallpaper by Art by Maria
(An Example for Open Composition)
( https://www.pinterest.com/pin/728598045960512307/ )

Both figures show repetition, but one for closed composition, the other for open composition. Personally, I prefer open composition as it allows me to think beyond the box based on my perception. Although I already know how it looks like beyond the box, but it gives me extra attention and excitement.  So I might be designing a open composition for my repetition design. For movement, the idea of "Flow state" came into my mind. It means a sense of fluidity between your body and mind, where you are totally absorbed by and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction (headspace, n.d.). Popularized by positive psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura, flow state describes a feeling where, under the right conditions, you become fully immersed in whatever you are doing (headspace, n.d.).

“There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a 2004 TED Talk. 

Reference: https://www.headspace.com/articles/flow-state

Eventually, I searched "flow" on Pinterest. Surprisingly, it leads me to some architecture and interior designs. 

Figure 2.3: A light that shows Movement by Nikolas Weinstein Studios

( https://www.pinterest.com/pin/594967800756273323/ )

Figure 2.4: Gallery of Changsha Meixihu International Culture and Art Centre
that shows Movement
( https://www.pinterest.com/pin/386042999310221644/ )

Meanwhile, I am creating contents for my side hustle - a sports podcast. With the influence of the lecture this week about repetition, I designed some Instagram stories and posts about repetition for it:

Figure 3.1: Trailer IG story for my sports podcast

Figure 3.2: 3 slides of design for my podcast's IG post

Figure 3.3: The making of content designs by applying repetition

For my side hustle podcast, I make use of repetition as the background for the IG stories and posts. Figure 3.2 is my favourite, as I not only apply repetition into the background, I also make good use of contrast by using the diff colour tone of black to grey for the sentence "It's a wrap !". Having said that, again, multiple principles can be apply to a design.

Let's get back to the exercises of the week, here's my 1st draft for repetition and movement:

Figure 4: 1st draft for Repetition and Movement

Figure 5.1: Drafting progression for Repetition by using Illustrator

Figure 5.2: Initial idea for Repetition's background

Figure 5.3: Further exploration for Repetition by including my cute character

I started with the draft on my draft book. Initially, I wanted to follow my draft, which is by creating background with the repetition of sentence "PEANUT BUTTER & PERSONAL BEST". Story behind this sentence is related to the peanut butter toast lifting weights. For Powerlifter (yes! I'm a powerlifting athlete), 'PB' means personal best ... and also peanut butter! It's cute, and I actually wanted to create something cute like "Eat PB, and hit PB!". But after that, when I proceeded to try it on Illustrator, I didn't come out with something cute. Instead, I came out with Figure 5.2 and Figure 5.3. As usual, I asked Dr. Jinchi for some advices regarding to these ideas. 

💬 FEEDBACK 1

Dr. Jinchi:
Hi Shu Wei, nice to see some exploration of ideas! I like how you conceptualise your ideas and try to incorporate inner/hidden messages in them. For now, the repetition idea is not so apparent because the "word patterns" are distracted by the image of the peanut toast lifting weight on the right. The root word of repetition is repeat so why not you replace all the ampersands (this symbol &) in the text with a tiny version of the peanut toast lifting weights? To make the design more interesting and reflect stronger on the principle of repetition, you replace all the & with the little design of the peanut toast lifting weights.

After that, I proceed with Dr. Jinchi's feedback with the draft (Figure 5.4) below:

Figure 5.4: 3th draft for Repetition based on Dr.Jinchi's feedback

I tried to replace all the '&' with the toast lifting weight, but it came out to be really messy which I didn't like. So, I reduced and tried to balance out the amount of toasts, and to make it more interesting, I adjusted the colour of the wordings. The toast will not be in black colour, but in brown colour as well. The reason of not changing it was because I can't find any ways to change the colour at that moment. But it is okay, as it is just a draft. 

Meanwhile, I proceed to further explore for my Movement piece. By going through my initial ideas again, I came out with a new draft, most of it are the combination of "flow state" and flowing river. 

Figure 6: 2nd draft for Movement

💬 FEEDBACK 2

During the tutorial, Dr. Jinchi provided me some feedbacks for 3th draft for repetition (Figure 5.4). I told her that I am not satisfied with the this draft yet, and shared to her my initial idea of just making the background with the repetition of sentence. She then suggested me to only apply "Personal Best" in repetition for the background.

For movement, she suggested me to proceed with the left bottom one from my 2nd draft (figure 6). I told her my concern of the colours, whether earth tone and blue tone can be harmony together. She advised me to create some white space surrounding the typeface, and choose a more yellow light kind of brown instead. In addition, she mentioned that she noticed I am more like a wordings, typeface kind of person, especially from my exercise 1 to this exercise. 

After the tutorial, Dr. Jinchi provided us feedback for our Exercise 2 in private. This is her feedback:

For balance, the allocation of space in the overall composition of the final design reflects the principle. Emphasis is successfully shown through the interesting arrangement of image and text. You have some understanding of open composition. It is interesting to read your blog, Shu Wei. You are systematic and the information in there shows your design journey very clearly. I understand that all takes time to complete and your hard work will not go unnoticed. It is apparent that you put in a lot of energy and quality time into it. I hear you in the reflection and I appreciate the openness in expression. 

After that, I proceeded to sketch the picture in my mind for repetition on A4 paper as below:

Figure 7: Sketch for repetition

I ended up did not exactly follow Dr. Jinchi's advice of using "Personal Best" for the backrgound. Instead, I felt "PB" is enough as the peanut butter toast lifting weights had shown the meaning of "Peanut Butter" and "Personal Best". Well, since this is a hidden message, IF YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW.

💬 FEEDBACK 3

Dr. Jinchi replied that this is better. She likes the PB instead of the full words. Repeating PB is more effective than the full words. Design wise, it does look more exciting that lots of words. 

Hence, I proceed to the final stage of producing the final outcome:

Figure 8.1: Final sketch for repetition

Figure 8.2: Final sketch for movement

Figure 8.3: Painting for repetition

Figure 8.4: Painting for repetition

Figure 8.5: Painting for movement

🏁 FINAL DESIGN OUTCOME

Figure 9.1: Repetition

Figure 9.2: Movement

💗 REFLECTION OF THE WEEK

Putting aside all the emotional kind of reflection, Dr. Jinchi's feedback saying that I am more like a typeface person actually makes me feel to challenge myself. Going through all the other friends' ideas during tutorial, I noticed mostly are very visual. Well, this is not a comparison, it is just me feel like the coming tutorial I want to challenge myself to create more visual designs instead. 

Regarding to this week's exercise, it is interesting yet challenging, especially for me who never learn in using watercolour. I think I only tried watercolour for once in secondary school, mostly poster colour. This is why I a bit dissapointed towards my final outcomes. For like the peanut butter toast, I did not manage to come out with the spread effect I want on the toast, and the colour a bit off (I tried to mix and get the colour I want). Besides, for movement, you must be wondering why the final outcome came different than the progression in filling in colours. Haha, this is because....I had that image of the effect I want in my mind, but I don't know how to paint it out with watercolour. At the end I tried to "drag" the water and mix the colours out...well, I know 😭 Anyways, it's still not that bad...I would rate a 6 out of 10 for this movement. One more thing to explain for the final outcome for movement, which is why there is no earth tone. This is because at the point at Figure 8.5, I felt everything is so messy, and I even tried to re-do on other papers but they were all not good 😢 So, I decided to make it white, so the entire design looks much more "calming" to match with the message. 

In conclusion, fun week of discovering watercolour! To be honest, deep inside, I always wanted to try picking up this skill - water colouring, especially with a side hobby of journaling. Some very pro journaling profiles on Instagram and Pinterest, always show me their PRO watercolour florals ... and even daily architecture, foods (a.k.a. journaling what they experienced in daily lives by using watercolour to draw it out instead of photography) Great, I can now try it out more often on my journal too since I bought watercolours materials. Overall, the idea of this module, by including different art materials, is very fun, and I would say it is effective for students to learn and try out new skills.