Composition

On my 5th week of Principles of Design we were taught about Composition.

Here's what we've learnt :)
Oh before class today, we had to pre-prepare a 12x9inch mounting board with a 8x5inch cut-in frame. I kinda expected that composition/grids will be taught that day hehe.

Composition is the process of placing, arranging, rearranging text and graphics on a plane. A good composition is not only pleasing to the eye, but also effectively conveys the message to the target audience(s).

1. Format

• The 1st step in design for page layout is choosing your format (eg. portrait, landscape, square, circular etc)

2. Layout

• Symmetrical & Asymmetrical.

3. Grid

• Grid offers guides for graphic elements to line-up vertically, horizontally or diagonally while still considering the basic rules of composition because our eyes and brains crave a certain amount of order and consistency.

4. Rule of Thirds

• Breaking the board up into thirds and placing elements along upper lines and at the intersections.
• Do avoid discomfort tangent.

5. White Space

• Just as important as the text and graphics on the page in the empty space, giving it visual breathing space and emphasis.

The 3 Phases of Designing:

1. Research
2. Development
3. Finalize

Research

Basic guidelines:

1. Research subject and client

2. Resource look and examples

3. Demographic and scope

4. What media will comp exist?

5. Others: Paper, binding, color, format and size.

Development
Primarily consists of finding and making variations (be it in your choice of format , color, layout, theme, font, typography etc)

"Do not rely on your fist conceptual idea all the way throughout your design process. Always work on at least 3 completely different ideas for a project."

Basic Guidelines:
1. Which visual elements and principles of design are going to be utilized.
2. Variations of a concept are as important as the concept itself.
3. Traditional forms of hand drawn art.

Finalize
Basic Guidelines:
1. Final craftsmanship
2. Digital software
3. Resolution
4. Color modes (CMYK-RGB)
5. Post production control

After the show of slides, we were assigned to 

select a subject matter of each of our liking (eg. door, window, bottle, cup, bin, food etc) and spend the next 1 hour going around campus capturing as many photos of each of our subject matter. We needed to hold or stick the frame in every shot as the 'view finder', using it to compose / crop our shots. Return to class, go through taken shots and narrow them to 20.

So, off I went around campus. But before taking pictures, I couldn't decide which subject matter I should choose. I then randomly took photos hoping to be inspired enough to pick a subject. Well, I did of course. I chose logos! Well not exactly logos, I took pictures of brands and signs too. So what do you call it? Public signs? Well, with a lot of shoplots around Broadwalk, logos/brands would be a good option.
Therefore... here are the selected 20 photos!

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20!

After returning to class, another assignment was given. It was more to a continuous of what we've done, capturing 20 photos with the Rules of Thirds applied. This time, we needed to take 30 shots outside campus. So that'll be a total of 50 photos. 50 photos will then be collected to create a short movie clip. A nice title shall be given to the movie clip. Besides, we may be creative and add subtitles/narration/make a story out of these photos. Lastly, we needa present our movie clip in class next week by bringing them in a thumbdrive and transferring it to Ms Lisa's laptop so the whole class can view together. :)