DesignPoints.html

Design Points Made By David Slayden

Visuals DO carry meaning. The look or style of a presentation is not empty. Therefore an essential question is: Does my presentation carry the meaning I intended?
Design shapes our life. Increasingly we live in a designed world rather that in nature.
All media have limitations. We must work within and against the limitations of our medium? The design problem is to make the most of our choosen medium given its constraints.

Smooth, flat, horizonal shapes give a sense of stability and of calm.
Vertical shapes are more exciting and more active than horizonal. They rebel against gravity and give off energy.
Diagonal shapes are more exciting and more active. They imply motion or tension.
The upper half of a picture is a place of freedom, happiness and triumph. It is a dominant space, more spiritial and carries greater pictural weight.
The center of a page is the most effective center of attention. Its the point of greatest attraction.
White or light backgrounds feel safer to us than dark backgrounds.
We tend to be more scared or afraid looking at pointed shapes; whereas, rounded shapes are more friendly and calming.
The larger an object the stronger it feels.
Among objects we tend to associate the same or similar colors much more strongly than we do the same shape.
We notice contrasts. They enable us to see and make distinctions. We tend to see before we read!

Screen designers must work in "flat land" and represent three dimensions in two.
Putting space around a figure isolates it. The greater the space the more the isolation.
The sense of movement of an object is determined as much or more by the space between the shapes as it is by the form of the shapes themselves.
Anytime two objects overlap the overlaping object takes the place of the covered one. It dominates it, pierces it while joining the objects together. (The viewing mind tends to complete the covered object in its imagination however)