The Elements & Principles of Design
A two-part project in Adobe Photoshop. Part 1 is a catalogue. Part 2 is a composition. They are different jobs and Part 2 is the harder one, so give yourself room for it.
Elements – Color, Line, Mass, Movement, Space, Texture, Type & Value
Principles – Balance, Contrast, Direction, Economy, Emphasis, Proportion, Rhythm & Unity
Elements & Principles Vocabulary (HERE – Links to an external page.)
The Elements & Principles of Design are the governing vocabulary that define, illustrate and communicate how Graphic Design functions all around us. These terms are of great value and importance and should be understood and applied by designers.
***I will always add our class recordings / demonstrations to the Class Recordings section of this website the next day after class***
Part 1. The two grids
What you are making: two square composite images. One holds the 8 elements, one holds the 8 principles. Each of the 16 terms gets one image that shows what that term means, plus the word itself.
Specs. 12 x 12 inches. 150 ppi. RGB. Save each one twice, as a layered .psd and as a .jpg.
Step 1. Gather, before you open Photoshop
Bring 20 candidate images to our next class. Not 16, twenty, so you have something to reject. This step has its own deadline on purpose. Gathering and designing in the same night is why posters come out rushed.
Find them anywhere: the internet, our Course Resources page, books and magazines you own, or photograph your own. For each image, note where it came from. One line is enough. Knowing the source of what you use is part of the job from now on.
Image quality matters. Not everything pulled off the web is usable. Small, blurry or heavily compressed images will fall apart when you scale them. We will look at how to judge this together in class.
Step 2. Build the grids
Cut, format and place your chosen images into the grid. Use the template below as a starting point, or build your own grid.
Click here to –> download the .psd photoshop file to use as a template.
Above are examples of both the Elements & Principles grids with their vocabulary.
Part 2. The poster
In Part 1 you collected the vocabulary. In Part 2 you have to speak it.
Design one poster that brings all 16 terms together. Here is the whole point of it:
Your poster should not be a page about the elements and principles. It should be a demonstration of them.
If your poster names contrast but nothing on it contrasts, the poster is not doing its job, even if the word is spelled correctly. If it names balance, the page itself should feel balanced. Make the thing do what it says.
Specs
- Size: your choice. 11 x 17 inches is recommended. Vertical or horizontal.
- Resolution: 150 ppi
- Color mode: RGB
- Files: one layered .psd and one .jpg
What goes on it
- All 16 terms, as words a person can read
- Imagery for each. Reuse your Part 1 images or find better ones
- Your name, designed into the piece rather than typed in a corner
How to work
- Thumbnails on paper. Six small sketches, five minutes each. Do not open Photoshop yet. You are hunting for an arrangement, not a finished piece.
- Rough two of them in Photoshop. Grey boxes where images go is fine. You are testing a layout, not decorating.
- Three versions of the one you choose. Save them V1, V2, V3. Change one real thing each time: the grid, the relationship between type sizes, the colour.
- Final. Export the .jpg and keep the .psd with layers intact.
Hand in all three versions, not only the final, with a sentence on each saying what you changed and why. The versions are where the learning shows. My own version of this poster went to V9 before I liked it.
How to tell if it is working
- Can a stranger find the most important thing on the page in two seconds?
- Do the 16 terms read as one composition, or as 16 separate stickers?
- Is there a structure holding it together: a grid, a spine, a path for the eye?
- Does the poster itself demonstrate at least five of the terms it names?
- Is the type legible at arm’s length?
Look at these before you start
Do not design in a vacuum. An hour spent looking at real posters will save you three hours of pushing boxes around.
- Poster House, 119 West 23rd Street, is the only museum in the country devoted entirely to posters and it is a short ride from BMCC. Over 15,000 posters online, searchable by designer, country and period. Start here.
- AIGA Design Archives, over 20,000 pieces, free, no account needed. You can browse by colour, which is unusually useful for this project. Pick a colour, look at fifty posters that use it, notice what they do differently.
- Josef Müller-Brockmann at MoMA. He wrote the book on grid systems, literally. Look at how few elements he uses and how hard each one works. If your poster feels noisy, spend ten minutes here.
- Jacqueline Casey designed posters for MIT for thirty years. Her whole job was making one image and a few words carry an idea, which is close to what you are being asked to do. Here is one of hers with commentary.
Share it. This is the part that matters most.
Bring your three versions to class. Not just the final one. We put them up, we look at them together, and you say one sentence about what changed between V1 and V3.
This is not a test and I am not trying to catch anyone out. Design is a conversation and you cannot have it alone in Photoshop at 2am. The students who show work early and often get better fastest. Every single time.
If something is not finished, bring it anyway. A rough version you can talk about is worth more to you than a polished one nobody sees.
Submission guidelines:
When your assignment / assignments have been completed please add them to our class Google Drive shared folder – (the link to the folder is located in our course Brightspace page.) Please send me an e-mail when your work is ready for review – rseslow@bmcc.cuny.edu
*Please make sure to create a folder for yourself with your first and last name and please name your files with your name – Example file name(s) look like this below:
