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Make Your Designs Dance
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Lauren Krause
Lauren Krause often, seen on the Web as LaurenMarie, is a creative consultant and author of Creative Curio, a blog dedicated to learning, discussing and exploring the realm of graphic design. She designs websites, identity packages, large format graphics for tradeshows and events, and a variety of print collateral for small to medium sized businesses, as well as provides guidance to them for online marketing strategies. As alternative creative outlets, Lauren enjoys scrapbooking, photography and letterpress printing. You can find her on Twitter as @creativecurio.
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Lauren Krauseóoften
October 12, 2009
Enhance Your Designs with the Principle of Rhythm
Just as in music, a good rhythmic design is very appealing! You feel almost like you can dance to a catalog that has images and key text in predictable places as you flip from page to page and section to section. The design has a visual beat you can follow!
What is Rhythm?
Rhythm is repetition. Rhythm is consistency. Rhythm is an established placement of elements and it brings immense unity to a layout.
Rhythm is used to…
Unify
Direct
Emphasize
Creating Rhythm
Rhythm and proportion are closely aligned. They are slightly different in that rhythm focuses on the repetitive (in the truest sense of the word, which is not “boring”) aspect of a design. Rhythm also helps to achieve balance and can even contribute to a design’s direction and emphasis.
Repeat specific colors (your palette) throughout the layout. Similar to proportion, seek to use these specific colors more than once, so that they obviously belong in the layout.
Carefully arranged lines add a lot of visual order and emphasize the grid.
Scale can be a subtle way to create rhythm. You can repeat an object but reduce the size each time. This would also help create direction (almost like an arrow pointing from smallest to largest and then onward towards the focal point).
It’s a good idea to repeat obvious shapes and use them to help guide the audience’s eye through a design.
Rhythm can be seen in the element of space when you consider the overall distribution of objects. Using a consistent layout with the help of a structured grid will add
Use a similar texture or pattern to help identify different parts of the design or system.
Just like creating rhythm with color, stay within a set range of values.
Examples of Rhythm
One Degree
One Degree Logo by Landor
You may have seen the debate over the winning logo from the Wolda awards. Sure, at first glance it may seem overly simplistic and uninspiring, but then you discover how Jason Little from Landor Associates Sydney has employed this little guy all over the One Degree literature and you begin to really appreciate this gem of a mark. Rhythm can be as simple as a repeated graphic. But in its simplicity, this graphic adds a whole dimension of careful, thoughtful planning (hey, that’s design!). Here they also use the blue to add repetition—not to mention it adds to the more environmentally friendly print aspect, only using two colors, black and blue. Hopefully they also used soy inks and recycled papers!
Super Heroes
Super Heroes by Pentagram
This is an excellent example of rhythm through repeated shapes. Notice how all the shapes together make a rounded rectangle, but the divided shapes have square corners unless they are one of the corners of the larger rounded rectangle.
Continue reading on next page.
CreativeCurio
10 months ago
26 comments
Thank you, anotherGauguin! You'll find more like this on my blog if you would like to take a look.
Account Removed
10 months ago
oh this is one hugely fantastic article. THUMBS UP !!
CreativeCurio
10 months ago
26 comments
Klockarsdesign, glad you enjoyed the article! Great follow up points, too. Thanks!
Hi Courtney, I can totally relate to what you're feeling. I think it's completely normal and every student goes through it (I know I did, heck, sometimes I STILL feel that way!). To be a successful designer, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Sure it's cool if you think of something new, but not necessary. Find something that WORKS, that's what is important. Take a look at this article, Don’t Worry About Being Original, Be Genuinely Useful (I hope that code to link it works...). The title alone speaks to us, doesn't it? :)
courtneyyy
10 months ago
1604 comments
nice read, & great photo illustrations. :::::::::::::: i have to say though, this article brings to mind the great question i have as a design student: the balance between using tried-&-true methods and trying do something new. if you've gotta choose between the two, which is more important?? for example: the final project in the typography class i just finished was a type-driven directional poster, showing the route from our house to campus. the obvious thing to do was to do something very modernist, with text & lines. i consciously tried to do something different, & it didn't work so well. but many people--including the one that got the best response--did exactly what i expected. so what's more important for design: doing something that works but isn't necessarily the most original idea, or doing something that's fresh?? :::::::::: anyone who's got an answer, pleeaase message me..
klockarsdesign
10 months ago
3302 comments
Great points! And, major attributes of design, for sure. One caution in using it though, it is often difficult to separate the dancer from the dance. The rhythms one uses need to somehow be " harmonic" with the content and format or the meaning of the content becomes distorted and/or lost. As the designer, you must explore the variables, recognize the differences, and make selections with sensitivity to this.