Gestalt and Visual Momentum.

Gestalt and Visual Momentum.

Formal balancein design

Formal balance : when/if you are balancing similar characteristics you are balancing your design formally.

Formal balance is an obvious balance. It is as if you are equalizing parts of a scale with the same substance. Let us say, you have a bunch of cotton and you want to equalize your scale using the cotton. No brainier! You are separating your cotton into equal parts on the scale and by doing that you are equalizing the scale. In other words you are achieving a formal balance. This balance will be a formal balance. Formal balance is easy to verify : just compare both parts and as long as they are equal, balance is achieved. However it does not mean that it is easy to create valuable design basing of formal balance. There are some masterpieces with are based on a formal balance. The problem is that formal balance in its generic case is very static and redundant, unless designer did not find special remedy to make formally balanced design look on-the-edge and special.

When you have same amount of similar elements in the left and right ,or /and in the top and bottom half of your design you have a formal balance. Usually these designs are symmetrical

Informal balance in visual design

Informal balance: when /if you are balancing dissimilar characteristics you are balancing your design informally.
Informal balance is much more a “ judgment call” it is more difficult to verify appearance of informal balance and therefore it is more “risky” to build your design on informal balance. Designer has to possess impeccable sense of harmony to balance design informally, otherwise it is quite possible that accomplished design will look just poorly balanced or not balanced at all. Using our previous metaphor of scale : parts of your scale could be very equalized if even you are scaling dissimilar substance: cotton and iron, for example. Design wise speaking , by managing smaller segments with heavier elements and bigger segments with lighter elements it is easy to produce an appearance of equilibrium.

When you have different amount of dissimilar elements in the left and right , and/or in the top and bottom half of your design you have to use formal balance. Informal balance is achieved if/when despite obvious unlikeness of elements integrated in different parts of composition visual effect of equilibrium is obvious. Informal balance is always asymmetrical.

Geometric abstraction by Jeong Yoon Lee

Texture created by typing by Jeong Yoon Lee

I used letter for design; “happy”
,”no way” , “one way” like most people always use in life.
I wantto make look just simple and clean. That’s why i did.

Monochromatic colors

Monochromatic colors are colors of the same hue but different lightness and/or darkness. In other words, monochromatic color scheme is basing on color combinations of tints and/or shades of the same hue . On the color wheel monochromatic color scheme is represented by one hue only. In combination of whitening ( tints) and darkening (shades) of this hue it is possible to create multiple colors. This ancient Chinese painting is built predominantly on a monochromatic color scheme.



This ancient Chinese painting below is built predominantly on a monochromatic color scheme.

Analogous colors

Analogous colors are combination of hues which are “next door neighbors” on the color wheel. Any set of hues which represents consecutive sequence of hues from color wheel constitutes analogous color scheme .

Split Complementary colors

Split Complementary colors are colors which are combination of one color on one side of color wheel and pair of colors on opposite side of color wheel. Not any pair of colors will be good for split complimentary color scheme. How to find this pair of colors? Select the first color, then find the color on opposite side of the wheel like it would be in complementary color scheme. Then select the color on the right side and on the left side from this color. This is your pair.
Split complementary color scheme consists from 3 colors but unlike secondary or primary color scheme it is not a triad , meaning, the space between colors in split complementary color scheme is not equal.

Complementary colors

Complementary colors are colors which are opposite to each other in the color wheel.
All these colors are complementary colors. Any color on the color wheel has its complement. There is one complement to each color therefore complementary color scheme is a scheme of two colors only.

Paintings below by Irina V. Ivanova are examples of implementation of complimentary color scheme

Secondary colors

Secondary colors are concrete colors orange, green and purple which are created as mixture of two primary colors. This graphic design image is created as a combination of secondary colors.

Primary colors

Primary colors are concrete colors red blue and yellow. Colors which cannot be created by mixing other colors and can be used as foundation for other colors ( secondary colors).


In history of art there’re are excellent examples of artwork entirely bult on primary colors
Piet Mondrian is intentionally limited himself by primary colors only c during his neoplasticism period . You can see examples of his artwork here
, here and here.
All of them created based on hues from primary color scheme only.
This image below is example of primary colors

abstract art as a concept

• Is this abstract or concrete?
• What is the subject of this image?
• What about this , this and this images? Are they abstract or concrete?

falling-rocket is a painting by Whistler . Is it abstract or concrete?