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Due to your immense knowledge and experience of life on this planet, you have been
summoned...
By who... ? For what... ?

When... ? I’ve got plans
you know!

Just wait a minute... you need to know more information
before you can successfully complete the mission you

have been assigned...

Principles of design

Design is the process and product of structuring visual form. It grows out of a basic human
need to find and make meaningful order of things around us. What is your bedroom looking like
at this moment of time? Is it in a meaningful order? It involves good planning so that things
function properly, as well as being aesthetically pleasing. Look at the two designs below. Which
one is well designed, and which one is not?

Design describes the way something is organized - a car design, a
fashion design, a mural design, a design for a mosaic... By giving
order to visual form, we intensify and clarify the visual experience.
Artists and designers, dancers and choreographers strive to give their
form an appearance of quality, therefore they may spend many hours
evaluating their work and making small changes, until they feel they
have created the right design or solution to the visual problem.

The urge to design is naturally found within us all - we are continually selecting, arranging and
forming - constantly determining the quality of our lives. Here are some examples:

x Where and how to write the address on an envelope
x How to lay the table for a fancy dinner
x What colour shoes best suit your new clothes
x The design of your house and garden
x The way you set your work out in your books

As the story goes, Henry Matisse, a famous
internationally renowned French artist working in the
first half of the 20th century, painted the same
painting six times. Each time he made small changes
to the "Pink Nude" he would stick small coloured
pieces of paper to the canvas to see how colour
changes would affect the overall design, before he
painted them in. Finally, he felt that everything
successfully worked together, and then he stopped.
He said, "Then a moment comes, when every part has found its definite relationship and from
then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to paint it
all over again."

Artifact Publications and Training 2015 6