Multimedia Design - The principles of Organization

1. Harmony

• The first of the principles of organization, may be defined as a pleasing relationship between different sections of a composition. It occurs when elements or independent parts have characteristics in common – such as repeated colors, similar textures, shares edges, and so forth. These areas become vitally linked; their commonality makes the visually related or “pulls the together”. Harmony, then may be thought of as the factor of cohesion that relates the various parts of a composition to each other.
• Event vastly different areas or images will begin to harmonize if they are related in a similar manner. For example, an artist can begin to relate two different kinds of lines, vertical and horizontal by making them all straight. If they were all the same length, they would harmonize even more, and if they were all drawn with an ink pen on damp paper, their similar character would relate them even further.
• We will look individually at the many ways an artist may create harmony, including the repetition of a pattern or motif, and the creation of visual groupings through closure, visual linking , and linking through extensions.

2. Variety

• Variety is the counterweight to harmony, the other side of organization essential to unity. While an artist might bring a work together with harmony, it is variety arouses the viewer’s curiosity and holds his or her attention.
• It is a factor of visual contrast – an isolation of elements and images. Like a good sheepdog that singles out one animal from the flock, the introduction of variety actively separates areas or images to make them more exciting and let them stand apart.

3. Balance

• Gravity is universal, and we spend our daily lives resisting its influence. While walking, standing on one leg, or tipping back in a chair, we experience its effect and intuitively seek a state of balance. When we are off balance, we have a strong fear that gravity will pull us over and we will fall down.

4. Proportion

• Proportion deals with the ratio of individual part to one another or to the whole. For example, the length of an arm in comparison to the length of an arm in comparison to the length of the whole body is a proportional relationship.
• In works of art, appropriate proportions are often difficult to determine and the relationships of part are hard to compare with accuracy because proportion is often a matter of personal judgment. When the ratios of parts to the whole seem logically related, the proportions created harmony and balance.

5. Dominance

• While developing an image, an artist strives for interest by creating differences that emphasize the degrees of importance of its various parts. These differences result from compositional considerations within the medium – some features are emphasized, and others are subordinated.
• This creates primary focal points and secondary areas of interest that help move the eye around the work.

6. Movement

• Many observers do not realize that in looking at artwork, they are being “taken on a tour”. The tour director is, of course, the artist, who makes the eye travel comfortable and informative by providing visual pathways and areas of rest. The roadways leading to the rest stops have certain speed limits established by the artist, and the rest stops are of a predetermined duration.
• The artist’s roadways are, in fact , transitions between optical units, and the time required to negotiate them depends on the amount of harmony and variety applied to each. The eye movements dictated by these transitions are produced by the direction of lines, shapes, and shape edges (of contours) that seem to relate and “connect” to one another.
• The lines, shapes and shape contours are generally pointed at one another or in the same general direction. They may be touching but are normally interrupted by gaps over which the eyes skip as they move about. Sometimes “leaps” are necessary, requiring strong directional thrusts and attractions.

7. Economy

• As a work develops, the artist may realize that the solution to various compositional problems are resulting in unnecessary complexity. This situation is frequently characterized by broad aspect of the work deteriorating into fragmentation, and it commonly results from the artist’s working on one segment of the composition at a time.
• While this may be a necessary part of the developmental phase of the work, such isolated solutions may result in a lack of visual unity in the overall composition. 
• Employing the principle of economy means composing with efficiently – expressing an idea as simply and directly as possible with no arbitrary or excessive use of the elements. Economy has no rules but rather must be an outgrowth of the artist’s instincts. If some thing works with respect to the whole, it is kept; if disruptive, it may be reworked or reject.