LinkedIn Learning: Layout and Composition, Advanced Principles

As these modules lectures are drawing to an end I’ve started to think a lot more about my portfolio and what it is exactly that I want to do to improve it. I’ve decided that my best course of action is to create an entirely new portfolio, using the same work from before but presenting it in a new fashion. I will be using the branding guide I created previously to ensure it portrays my digital identity as a designer. I also intend to incorporate some of the work I’ve completed throughout my LinkedIn Learning courses.

1h 17m * Intermediate * Course

Over the summer I completed the course Graphic Design Foundations: Layout and Composition by Sean Adams, this is what led me to Layout and Composition, Advanced Principles which according to the description will build on what I’ve already learnt prior to today. Just based on the opening video I know this course is built on fewer absolutes and appears to be more open to opportunities for personal expression and spontaneity. In the previous course a lot of the techniques were based on absolutes. You can not do this, You must do that. Whereas Layout and Composition, Advanced Principles seems more focused on teaching techniques that you can interpret and utilise for your projects. The main objective appears to be learning why you incorporated a technique into your design and what is the purpose?

Not everything is 100% correct or 100% wrong.

As a perfectionist, I struggle with the concept of everything not being one hundred percent right or wrong, I prefer to live in absolutes. Watching this course has helped me to understand that instead of something being right or wrong it's more about people's perspectives and which design is more entertaining and engaging. Throughout the course Adams refers to designing with purpose and meaning, I don’t think I fully grasped what it was he was referring to until the end of the course as I struggle to put it into words, but my understanding is that it's not about the purpose of the design so much as the purpose of each component in the design, why is it there? What does it bring to the design? And how does it relate to the original purpose of the design? Ultimately a design that is engaging to an audience is typically going to be a design that was made with a purpose. Adams enforces throughout the course that if there isn't a meaning or reason for something to be incorporated into the design then it shouldn’t be there. The goal of any design project is to catch and maintain the viewers attention by communicating an idea and consequently making it memorable.

Colour is an emotionally charged tool. Colour palettes construct hierarchy, creating harmony within a design.

Sean Adams actually has a handful of books that provide an in-depth look at colours in design, for example The Designer’s Dictionary of Colour. Some of his concepts seem quite bold and out there but whilst hesitant I find this intriguing and am curious to see what else I could learn from him as a designer.

Simple colour combinations are easy to control and can be bold. On the other hand the more complex colour palettes are they can be compelling and engaging for the viewer. Adams instils that there can be no wrong colour and that a designers only mistake is to be timid and work without intent.

Typography is simply pictures of words.

Expressive typography can replace an image. The result creates a puzzle the viewer can solve causing a sense of joy to manifest when they recognise the type for the image represented. The emotional response makes it more memorable.

Adams addresses negative space as a tool to connote the importance of something within a design, for instance if an image is surrounded by a wider show of negative space than other components in the design then the viewers eyes will be drawn to that image, giving it an aura of significance. It also allows a composition to breathe and guide the viewers through the hierarchy. It creates a bold and aggressive composition, when used in excess. Similarly space utilised with typography slows the reader down highlighting the words as important.

Adams briefly covers Tension and how it can be utilised within a composition to challenge the viewer, creating a similar response to the concept I described before making it more memorable. Before this course I wouldn't have strived to make my viewer uncomfortable through Tension in my layout. However now that I understand why there can be a need for it and also how to build tension within a composition, it is something I look forward to trying in the future. Admittedly it isn’t a technique I will be incorporating into my portfolio.

Scale

This video was particularly interesting prior to this course as I would have confidently said I understand and can effectively apply scale to my designs. Now however I realise scale is more complicated than I had previously imagined and can be used in ways I have yet to practice and even learn. For example, a concept I was unaware of is Scale Change. Whilst I can see the difference between the size in font of a heading to the difference to the main text in a document, I hadn’t understood the thought that went on behind choosing the difference in sizes of both. In order to establish a balanced professional design, Scale Change uses a consistent ratio that coordinates the layout of assets into an overall visual. This is applicable in any format as long as it is systematically and proportionately consistent.

Adams talks about using a grid structure underneath your layout to avoid a chaotic mess as it helps align elements in creating proportional consistency. This is actually a technique I'm familiar with and have used within my own work in Adobe InDesign. However I found it interesting how Adams orientated his components within the grid. It consisted of layouts I hadn’t considered as a viable option but they worked due to a consistency in the spacing and scale. This leads on nicely to the next portion of videos where Adams enforces the importance of proportions and how to utilise them for impact.

Consistent Proportions create structure that provides balance and harmony.

The final group of videos addressed symmetry, asymmetry, disharmony and alternative layout processes. The symmetry portion communicated solutions to avoiding an expected and unengaging composition, instead demonstrating how to establish a dramatic yet symmetrical composition. This was done by utilising techniques taught earlier on in this course one example would be the scale in this catalogue cover by Jennifer Morla for Design Within Reach. Symmetrical layouts are expected and highlight how important it is to create a bold sense of scale, colour, content and form to create a professional design.

Being a bit of a history buff myself I found it particularly interesting to learn that ancient Civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Aztecs used astronomical alignments as a guide for the positions of structures on the ground. For example the pyramids of Geeza were supposedly laid out to mirror the position of Orion's Belt. Adams also went on to explain how we can use other alignments as a guide for a layout to our compositions.

Admittedly the concept is a bit out there however it reminded me of A-level Photography where we studied how nature and Maths sit together and how we can bring that into our own compositions to create balanced organic layouts. One example of this and my particular favourite is the golden spiral, a shape that is infinitely repeated when magnified and can be found throughout history and within the Natural World itself. To reiterate I'm really intrigued by the idea of using these natural patterns to create an alternative layout and composition unfortunately I don't think it would suit my portfolio as I wouldn't want the overall composition to obscure the work and images that I'm trying to present.

Admittedly the Maximalist video didn't start out visually portraying anything different to me. I was under the impression there wasn't really anything new for me to learn when he was discovering techniques that I already knew but hadn't particularly applied before.

Then an image dominated the screen demonstrating another approach that Adams described as creating multiples of a single format rather than making one flyer for an event. This was actually a concept I came across while researching possible business card ideas. I came across one particular artist that used each business card to showcase a different piece of her work. I found this really interesting and immediately started sketching up my own ideas however I eventually realised that the direction I was going in was going to leave my work with a branding issue, as it would lack consistency. I knew I needed to find a way to portray my business cards as a cohesive project. Adams shows how this is possible by maintaining a type of graphic and colour palette that delivers a unified campaign and also makes the communication more exciting than just one idea. He describes this as just one solution to maximalist as you need to contrast it with nothing.

Reflection

For me this was by far one of the most engaging and informative courses I have had the pleasure of discovering on LinkedIn Learning. As I’ve now noticed I employed a lot of visuals into this blog post, the reason for this was because I felt like my reader needed to see what I was seeing to really understand what I am trying to convey to them. As I have mentioned before I have learning difficulties which make processing words quite difficult. For me words don’t really deliver much of an impact and I struggle with using them in general. It can take me weeks just to write one of these blog posts and to get it to a standard that I would feel comfortable sharing with people, and even then typically it will still need work. I’ll ask for an outsider’s opinion and wonder - Did I use this word correctly? Does this make sense? Do they comprehend what I'm trying to communicate? Majority of the time I receive a positive response which I ultimately find hard to believe, as I feel Something is always missing, Something is always wrong, or Something always needs to be improved.

The fact that Sean Adams refers to his belief that nothing is 100% right or wrong ever, is something that I needed to hear. I’m not sure it will affect my views on my writing but in a visual context I can understand and appreciate it.

Ultimately I think it was a combination of his use of visuals accompanying his language that helped me in really understanding what it was that he was depicting in his language.