2.1 Introduction

When you are at your local hardware store selecting a new vacuum cleaner, electric drill, or kettle, you may not realize that those products are communicating with you through their form, composition, and element combinations. Every well-designed product you use is sending you a message in this way.

Let’s imagine that all the electric drills are lined up on two shelves and that you have some idea of what you want. Your requirements may include ideas like cordless, easy to hold, storage for extra drill bits, strong carrying case, and so on. Based on your requirements, you will expect the product housing to provide you with a clue about where the battery is – perhaps one unit has a different colour and a visible parting line to indicate separation. The product may clearly communicate where the grip is and that it is strong and fits your hand, or the grip is a different colour and made of a softer material, like silicone, that prevents slipping. You will also want clues about where you can store your extra drill bits – perhaps the handle end has an elongated section that clearly opens and has a locking mechanism so none of the drill bits can fall out. As well, you will want to be convinced that the carrying case is right for you – perhaps it is very compact, and you know it will fit with your other workshop tools, or it may have a large handle and two closing tabs that snap firmly shut. As you may know from other shopping experiences, not every electric drill on the store shelf will meet your requirements – you will be considering tradeoffs and prices. Given these few overlapping requirements, and others not yet expressed, the principles in this section offer the means to embed a visual language into the formal composition of those electric drills to help you choose the best one for you. These principles apply to any other products we design from baby strollers to car dashboards.

In this chapter, we are going to explore how designers embed messages that communicate with users to impart emotion, meaning, and function into the visual language of products. This chapter explores a designer’s foundational knowledge by providing principles for developing product shapes and forms, often referred to as “the look and feel” of the product. In this chapter, you will learn:

• What a composition is.
• How overall form can be organized to communicate messages about how to perceive it.
• The Gestalt principles of visual organization that contribute to the perceived aesthetics, functionality, and user-friendliness of a product.
• How to systematically organize the elements within a composition to perceive them as a unified whole, where the whole is greater than the sum of its separate parts.
• The kinds of relationships and hierarchies among the sub-elements of a composition that indicate a hierarchy of perception – from most information-rich to least.
• How proportions, orientation of axes, and formal transitions between elements contribute to a perceptual hierarchy and unify an overall composition.