Design as Mathematics V1

When I was very young and only beginning to discover my talents as an artist someone very close to me told me that mathematics had everything to do with visual communications. Of course I believed them and noted the fact, but I never really cared to excel in the interesting realm of mathematical thinking. I would fall asleep in class or not even bother to go. I was amazed that when I would talk to fellow students and ask of their opinions, the study they usually dreaded was art. I thought to myself, how could this be? I love art! Why do they not share my passion? I would humor their answer by sharing my own misery of math.

Today I feel very differently toward this issue. When I transitioned from raw talent to educated graphic designer I had come to realize the importance of geometry in everyday decision making during the creative process. Fred Griffin, one of my many design mentors in Seattle gave me a good start at approaching the complex problem of design. Beyond the five elements of graphic design; line, color shape, form texture and value, one concept is that there are five basic relationships between two-dimensional shapes. These relationships are point-connection, edge-to-edge, overlap, pos/neg and contour continuation.

This is part of what is called a phrasing set. There are two other ideas included in this set of rules which I will touch on in another post. The two additional ideas are the five basic removals and five basic depth cues. These are simple guides in the logical selection and arrangement of visual elements for order and interest. The phrasing set is one of three the siblings of the phrasing set are the visual element set and most importantly, the composition set.