2.8 Conclusion
Through a detailed breakdown of design considerations for visual perception, this chapter explores the visual principles for designing compositions that communicate with viewers through their formal details and compositions. These contribute to a designer’s foundational knowledge. They are not prescriptive rules that you “must” do because there can be endless variations in rectilinear, curvilinear, and organic 3D compositions. It rests with each designer to explore the range of possibilities through attention to the overall composition and to the guiding principles for organizing the sub-elements within it. This is the challenge and the pleasure of designing products: there is no correct solution.
There can, however, be compositions that are more easily understood than others. In some cases it may mean that when you interact with a product you can easily identify where the controls are, which controls are most important, or which parts are to be ignored. At first, these principles may seem daunting since there are so many of them. Over time and with practice, they become automatically integrated into the ideation phase of product concept generation. These principles help designers develop varied and unique results that can be tested with users to see which compositions communicate the concept most effectively. Believe it or not, all of these considerations are only part of what a designer has to take into account when designing for manufacturing and consumer use. Other constraints, such as choice of materials and manufacturing processes, human factors considerations, and costs also influence the design elements and features of the final product. Each of those design decisions impacts the overall composition.
Key Takeaways
The key takeaways from this chapter include:
- An overview of the visual languages associated with different typologies of compositions, ranging through rectilinear, curvilinear, organic, and combinations of these.
- Knowledge of the Gestalt principles for creating a unified perceptual interpretation of a composition including closure, focal point, continuity, symmetry, figure/ground, proximity, similarity, as well as unity and variety, rhythm, and connectedness
- An awareness of the importance of perceiving an object composed of many sub-elements as a unified visual whole.
- An understanding of the strategies for manipulating proportions, axes, and formal transitions between sub-elements and surfaces to create the perception of a unified composition.
Chapter 2: Design & Visual Perception
Reflection Time!
Instructions
- Type your reflections for the 3Ts below: Thoughts, Tips, and Tools.
- To download your reflections as a document, click EXPORT to open a summary preview, then click the export icon on the top right of the window.
- Use your reflections to recall the key ideas later and to apply them in future situations.
Supplementary Activities for this Chapter
The Sense-It! Activities are categorized according to the Catalyze, Learn, and Apply (CLA) model defining the intended learning outcomes of the different categories of activities. This learning model is described in more depth on page 8 of the booklet Sense-It! In Action: Facilitator’s Guide, along with descriptions of the Sense-It! Product Cards and Sense-It! Tiles. These supplementary resources can be downloaded here.
An overview of each of the Sense-It! Activities and instructions for facilitating them can be found on pages 10-19 of the Facilitators’ Guide. The activities designed to support this chapter can be found starting on page 34 of the Sense-It! Activities booklet.
The next chapter introduces colour and light relationships and associations in the visual perception of products.
Key Words: Composition, Typology, Form factors, Form giving, Principles of Composition, Gestalt principles of perceptual organization, Visual relationships, Visual language, Hierarchy of elements, Creating unity through composition, Proportions, Proportion systems, Orientation of axes, FLUID surface transitions
