Ch4-5 Updated

Reading Summary:

Chapters four and five of Rebecca Hagen and Kim Golombisky (2016) White Space is Not Your Enemy focuses on how to design graphics. Chapter four talks about the 13 amateur errors. A quick summary of these errors are to avoid centered layouts, keep photos proportionate, use a universal font, don’t use bulky borders, have generous margins, keep headlines straight, do not clutter, keep negative space on the outer edges of layout, keep whitespace as background, think twice about tacky emphasis, use real bullets for lists, avoid inelegant breaks, and avoid rivers of white space. Chapter 5 focuses on the 7 elements of design, the rules of good design, and the Gestalt theory. The 7 elements of design are space, line, shape, size, color, texture, and value. The rules of good design are focal points, contrast, balance, movement, rhythm, and unity. Lastly, the four laws of the Gestalt theory are proximity, closure, similarity, and continuity. 

Outside Example:

My outside example is when my family hired a designer to fix up our house so, we could sell it. The designer replaced a lot of our photos and furniture. She reorganized many rooms and transformed our house. She was able to make our house feel more open and invitational through simply changing the position of a couch and a picture. The way she organized the room left there to be a lot of negative space in specific positions. She also used simplistic uniform colors and formats to design each room in the house. 

Reading Connection: 

The designer used many elements that were mentioned in chapter 5. She used space, more specifically negative space, to make the rooms feel bigger by moving the furniture around. She also used size and scale to create depth in the room. Color and contrast play a huge role in a room. You usually want complementary colors that fit the theme of a room however, there needs to be a big enough difference to see depth and dimensions. As you can see in the photo lines are emphasized in the island and cabinets. These lines create a texture versus having big wide spaces of a certain color in the house.