The Principles of Design •balance (symmetrical, asymmetrical, and radial) •emphasis (focal point) •proportion and scale •rhythm and repetition •unity and variety

Balance

Absolute Symmetry: Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man:Illustrations of the proportions of the Human Figure, 1485

Frank Gehry, Gehry house, 1977-1978, Los AngelesDiscontinuity – breaking the “rules” of design principles

Bilateral Symmetrical Balance, Enguerrand Quarton, The Coronation of Mary, 1454

Symmetrical BalanceJohannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664

Light and CompositionOrthogonal lines to the vanishing point meet precisely at the woman's finger.

Asymmetrical balance

William Merritt Chase, The Nursery, 1887

radial balance Rose window, Chartres Cathedral, France

Focal Point and EmphasisMarie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie Antoinette With Her Children

Emphasis and Focal PointJacques Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784

Focal Point and EmphasisLarry Poons, Orange Crush, 1963

Diego VELAZQUEZ, Las Meninas, 1656, Oil on canvas, 10'5" x 9'1competing focal points of emphasis

implied lines of the gazes and focal points of light

Scale

Claus Oldenburg, Trowel, 1971-76

Scale and proportion

Scale and proportion

Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, 1823-1829, color woodcut, 10 x 15 in.

Doryphoros or "Canon", 450 BC.Polykleitos created this statueTo support his published theoretical work "Canon" = "Rule", in which he was stating in mathematical terms the relationship of parts of the body with the whole, e.g. the proportion of finger with the palm, palm with wrist, wrist with elbow, elbow with arm. The proportion of the head with the body is one seventh (1/7).

Postmodern disjunctionElizabeth Murray, Jazz, 2001, 3-D lithograph

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,The desert sighs in the bed,And the crack in the tea-cup opensA lane to the land of the dead.

W.H. Auden

Rhythm and RepetitionRodin, Gates of Hell, 1900

Claude Monet, The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874

Great Wall of Los Angeles, Judy Baca