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.