Most people live with the clouded belief that "art has no law". But what is art? Art is actually good compositions of design elements which abide to certain rules and guidelines to hold interest and command attention, creating visual impact on the audience. Hence, the core principles upon which good design is built are absolutely essential to the education of any designer.
Our first lecture looked straight into the basics- principles of design. Apart from the basic elements of design (dot, line, shape, colour, texture, mass) which we already have a grasp of, principles of design is all about CRAP (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity). We learned about the details of different forms CRAP, and how CRAP is applied into design itself in the most suitable level, depending on the type of illustration and its purpose.
Visuals can be found everywhere around us; especially in the fields of advertising, public relations and journalism, visuals are extremely essential for the purpose of conveying a particular message to the mass audience. One of the rules we learnt in our second lecture was Gestalts Law of Perception, which focuses on four aspects- proximity, similarity, figure and ground, closure. These four aspects help shape our perspective and perception of visuals we see.
For the third lecture, we learnt about the relationship between visual communication and words. Accompanied by relevant visuals, words actually play a vital role in allowing a specific message to get through more effectively. We explored the evolution of visual communication, beginning from the rock and cave era, up to the computer era of today. We were also introduced to various aspects of visual communication and words, including layout, typography, colour and etc.
As an artsy person, I believe that art is about breaking the rules with creativity, but one must know of the rules in the first place. It was a good experience, learning about new things that I didn't know before, but now I can apply these in my future designs for better visual communication.