Welcome to Week 3 in our Design Principles Readers Challenge. Each week we’ll be posting information about a different design concept, together with sketches from Becky Fleck at Pagemaps, and our design team, that work to demonstrate the concept. We’d love you to join in by creating your own layouts, either using any one of Becky’s sketches OR creating your own design that showcases that week’s design principle. This week we are looking at rhythm and repetition in design.
Please email your pages or cards to us by next Tuesday 5 June to appear on our blog. Please try and use products supplied by Aussie Scrap Source brands (you’re quite spoiled for choice there!). Our favourite layout each week (as voted for by our design team) will win a prize pack of Aussie Scrap Source goodies!
WEEK 3: Proportion/Scale - Emphasis
Scale and proportion is all about the relationship of elements to other elements, based on their size. Scale can be used to draw our attention to the unexpected or exaggerated. Creating a focal point draws your attention to the most important element on the page, and one of easiest ways of doing this is by making this element appear bigger than the other elements on your page. This size or ‘visual hierarchy’ is determined by the scale of all the elements on the layout.
Louise Williams often uses a focal photograph with smaller ones and loosely based this layout on the sketch by Becky Fleck. Another way she makes one photo in particular the focus is by making the main one colour and the others in black and white.
Leeann Pearce has used the sketch as this shows a very clear example of scale, but she’s definitely added her own creative twist to it. By enlarging the main photo it makes this the focal point. Leeann has used a mixed of Studio Calico papers and embellishments.
This fabulous layout from Nikki Hobbs is a perfect illustration of proportion in design. The large photo is accentuated by its size whereas the two smaller ones are balanced with the journaling while the whole layout is tied together with the central band of paper.
We look forward to seeing what you can do to create a focal point on your layout using the simple but effective principle of scale and proportion!
