Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter Outline
Chapter 5. Principles of Design
BALANCE
Isamu Noguchi, Red Cube
Symmetrical Balance
Haruka Kojin, reflectwo
Georgia O’Keeffe, Deer’s Skull with Pedernal
Newar artists at Densatil monastery, Central Tibet, Thirteen-Deity Jnanadakini Mandala
Asymmetrical Balance
Some principles of asymmetrical balance
Gustav Klimt, Death and Life
Tawaraya (Nonomura) Sotatsu, The Zen Priest Choka
Joseph Mallord Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament
Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
RHYTHM
Maya Lin, Storm King Wave Field
Tawaraya Sotatsu, Painted Fans Mounted on a Screen
Paul Klee, Landscape with Yellow Birds
Leon Battista Alberti, Façade of Sant’Andrea, Mantua
Lecture Topics
1. Balancing unity and variety in design
2. Design conventions of the classical artists: the golden section, hierarchical scale, etc.
2. Define and explain symmetrical and asymmetrical balance, with special emphasis on the
general precepts about asymmetrical balance explained by figure 5.9. Also present the
concepts of emphasis and subordination and consider the interrelationships among these
principles of design. While projecting several images of works such as the Executions of the
Third of May, 1808 (fig. 5.16), discuss the artists’ decisions to employ different types of
balance and to emphasize or subordinate elements of the work and to successfully
communicate ideas and emotions.
3. Discuss scale and proportion, as well as rhythm, as used in the works illustrated in Chapter
Five, as well as in works from Chapter Ten (Graphic Design). Presenting examples of
cartoons/comics and advertising from current media can also energize the class. Ask the class
to select several works from these sources that use scale, proportion, and rhythm to convey
messages. Discuss which examples seem most successful or dynamic, and why.
Discussion Topics
1. Do artists in Eastern and Western cultures seem to differ in their use of symmetrical and
asymmetrical balance? If so, how and for what purposes?
2. What are some everyday objects that play with expected proportional relationships or were
created on an unusual scale? How do we respond to these objects? Why did their designers
create them in these ways? Do scale and proportional relationships communicate particular
messages? If so, how, and why?
3. How do artists create visual rhythm? For what reasons do they incorporate rhythmical
elements in their works? How are viewers influenced or affected by these rhythmic
elements?
4. How can we use the principles of design in our daily lives and creative endeavors? Can being
aware of these principles help us make judgments and decisions about our surroundings?
4. Review the general characteristics of informal balance in the text. Then cut out at least ten
shapes, some organic and some geometric. Use only three colors and make the shapes of
several sizes. Work out several arrangements of the shapes to achieve an asymmetrical, yet
visually balanced, design. When you feel that your design is balanced and visually
interesting, glue the shapes onto the background – which may be a solid color or texture, or a
simply divided picture plane. You may use software to create your design; if so, save and
print some of your preliminary designs as well as your final selection.
5. Create a work based on the proportions of the golden section. This may be either a two- or
three-dimensional work. Use graph paper or lay out a preliminary grid in light pencil lines
7. Choose a particular musical composition or a style of music (rock, rap, pop, country,
classical music – for instance) and tear or cut pieces of paper and organize them on a surface
(two- or three-dimensional) in such a manner that the rhythm of your composition reflects the
rhythm of the music you have chosen. Do not use recognizable pictures – like musicians or
musical instruments – to create your collage.
8. Present the idea of extreme unity and variety through the works of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity
Nets, the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock and the large canvasses of Agnes Martin. Choose
from a variety of media (ink stamps, pens, markers, crayons, collage elements) and create
your own unified design by repeating marks or shapes on a blank sheet of paper. How can
you introduce variety? How can you keep it unified?
“The African Magician never minded all their scoffs and holloaings,
or all they could say to him, but still cry’d Who’ll change old Lamps for
new ones? which he repeated so often about the Princess
Badroulbondour’s Palace, that that Princess, who was then in the Hall
with the four-and-twenty Windows, hearing a Man cry something, and
not being able to distinguish his Words, by reason of the holloaing of
the Mob about him, sent one of her Women Slaves down to know
what he cry’d.
“The Slave was not long before she return’d, and ran into the Hall,
laughing so heartily, that the Princess could not forbear herself. ‘Well,
Gigler,’ said the Princess, ‘will you tell me what you laugh at?’ ‘Alas!
Madam,’ answered the Slave, laughing still, ‘who can forbear laughing
to see a Fool with a Basket on his Arm, full of fine new Lamps, ask to
change them for old ones, which makes the Children and Mob make
such a Noise about him?’”
What a fool they thought him, and no wonder. Yet surely a magician
need not come all the way from Africa to teach the public this
strange rate of exchange. In Europe, Asia, and America too, as far
as it has yet been colonised, such one-sided bargains are made
every day.
Old lamps for new, kicks for halfpence—“Heads I win, Tails you
lose”—such are the laws of equity by which man deals with his
neighbour; and so the contest goes on, if, indeed, as Juvenal says,
that can be called a contest—
The slave of the princess with the long name had passed more of
her life in the palace than the streets, or she would not have found
the magician’s cry so strange: would have felt uncomfortably
conscious that the day might come when she, too, would barter new
lamps for old, perhaps humbly on her knees, entreating permission
to make the unequal exchange. In all the relations of life, but chiefly
in those with which the affections are concerned, we constantly see
gold for silver offered with both hands.
That “it is better to give than to receive” we have Scriptural warrant
for asserting. That—