3.2 Visual Elements — Basic Things That Can be Seen
3.2 Visual Elements — Basic Things That Can be Seen
Alex Hass
Point, line, and plane are the building blocks of design. From these elements, designers create images, icons, textures, patterns, diagrams, animations, and typographic systems. (Lupton & Phillips, 2014, p. 13)
Point
A point is a precise position or location on a surface. In purely mathematical terms, a point marks a set of coordinates — it has no mass at all. In this objective definition, a point is essentially a place. Visually, a point is a dot and therefore the basic building block of every variation of line, texture, and plane.
Subjectively, the term point has a lot of power. Point can direct attention, be the focus of attention, create emphasis, and cut through veiled information. The compositional term focal point brings the objective and subjective together by being the first place the eye is drawn to in a composition and usually contains the most important piece of visual communication.
Line
A line is the second most basic element of design — a line is a collection of points arranged in a linear manner (see Figure 3.2). A line connects two points, or traces the path of a movement. A line can be actual or implied — for instance, as a composition of two or more objects in a row. Lines in nature act as defining planes — examples are a horizon or the silhouette of a forest against the sky. Long straight lines do not often occur in nature, and therefore when they are present, they tend to dominate the landscape visually. Natural settings are usually parsed by the eye into shorter sequences of curved or straight lines and organic shapes.
When made by the hand, a line is created by the stroke of a pencil, pen, brush, or any mark-making tool. These lines can be thin or wide, and are expressive and distinct, reflecting the texture of the tool used to make them. Lines can create a plane (a shape) by being clustered together or by defining a shape. If the line is thickened, it changes and becomes a plane. When lines are made digitally, they can acquire many of the same qualities possessed by hand-drawn lines through the application of effects.
Plane
Like lines, planes (shapes) can be organically made or they can be geometric, as in the example shown in Figure 3.3. A plane is a flat surface that has defined borders. “A line closes to become a shape, a bounded plane” (Lupton & Phillips, 2014, p. 38). Planes are excellent compositional tools for clustering visual elements into visual fields. A plane can also act as a separating device and allow the viewer to see that one section of information is not linked to another.
In design software, a vector graphic is a shape created by defining its parameters with a line, and then filling it with a solid or textured fill. Grids help to create and define typographic planes that float or interact with solid planes of image, texture, or colour. In the physical world, everything is composed of shapes that are either two- or three-dimensional. How you ch