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