Design elements and principles

Visual design elements and principles describe fundamental ideas about the practice of visual design. Design elements are the basic units of any visual design which form its structure and convey visual messages. Painter and design theorist Maitland E. Graves (1902-1978), who attempted to gestate the fundamental principles of aesthetic order in visual design, in his book, The Art of Color and Design (1941), defined the elements of design as line, direction, shape, size, texture, value, and color, concluding that 'these elements are the materials from which all designs are built.' Color is the result of light reflecting back from an object to our eyes. The color that our eyes perceive is determined by the pigment of the object itself. Color theory and the color wheel are often referred to when studying colour combinations in visual design. Color is often deemed to be an important element of design as it is a universal language which presents the countless possibilities of visual communication. Hue, saturation, and brightness are the three characteristics that describe color. Color theory studies colour mixing and colour combinations. It is one of the first things that marked a progressive design approach. In visual design, designers refer to color theory as a body of practical guidance to achieving certain visual impacts with specific colour combinations. Theoretical color knowledge is implemented in designs in order to achieve a successful color design. Color harmony, often referred to as a 'measure of aesthetics', studies which colour combinations are harmonious and pleasing to the eye, and which colour combinations are not. Color harmony is a main concern for designers given that colors always exist in the presence of other colors in form or space. When a designer harmonizes colours, the relationships among a set of colours are enhanced to increase the way they compliment one another. Colors are harmonized to achieve a balanced, unified, and aesthetically pleasing effect for the viewer. Color harmony is achieved in a variety of ways, some of which consist of combining a set of colors that share the same hue, or a set of colors that share the same values for two of the three color characteristics (hue, saturation, brightness). Colour harmony can also be achieved by simply combining colors that are considered compatible to one another as represented in the color wheel.