Hello. In this short video, we're going to look at some examples, of the visual contrasts exercise that's part of Fundamentals of Graphic Design. In this exercise, we're trying to isolate individual aspects of contrast, and not show any of the other aspects of contrast. Here you can see a set that does really quite well. Each one is very clear and consistent, and each one focuses on just one aspect of contrast. Here we can see scale, for instance the shape remains the same, the weight remains the same, it's really just the size or the scale of the object that's changing. Likewise, here you can see just the weight changing, so the shape is the same, the tonal varying changes though, one is black and one is white. Here you can see all the aspects of contrast are very even between the two shapes. What this does is puts an emphasis on the contrast that we want to focus on, it uses the shape to show it's direction. Space works in a similar way. There's very little difference between the two black triangles but because of the composition, the negative space is activated, and the negative space becomes very prominent in the design. With form, everything is the same about the two shapes, the scale is the same, the weight is the same, the direction is similar, but the one thing that changes is the shape itself, the form. With texture you can see the same shape again, the same scale, they're both sitting fairly evenly on the page but the one thing that is different is the texture. Again, it's really isolating and focusing on just the one contrast that it's trying to demonstrate. If you squint your eyes, even with these two, you can actually see that they're totally quite similar as well. Here's another set and these needed a little tiny bit more work. That gray background is a little confusing, and here you can see that even though we're talking about scale, a large circle and a small circle, the fact that one circle is black on one circle is white creates a tonal difference between the two. It hasn't quite isolated just one aspect of contrast, there's actually two aspects of contrast visible. Here with weight, we can see a small shift in the tonal value between the two shapes. But there's also a different shape, so there's two visible contrasts as opposed to one. With this composition showing direction you can see where the gray background really isn't acting as a friend. Because now you've got the white triangles stepping outside of the black square, it becomes a little confusing. One of the things to do with this composition exercise is to keep it simple, and follow the rules like this one does for space. The shapes are the same, they're the same size, it's really just trying to show us the negative and the positive space, which is even. Try and stick to the rules of the brief as well. Try and use just the square with an outline on a white background as your base frame for this exercise. Try not to over-complicate things as well. Try not to do too much. Here with form, we can see that it works quite well with just two contrasting shapes, the same size but different shapes and the same with texture. Here we've got two different kinds of texture, 0ne thing to think about here though, might be to think about whether you want a lot and a little texture. There's a lot of tonal difference, a lot of difference in value between the two, but not that much different in texture. Here's another set that works fairly well, but could use a little bit of help in some areas. There's no bounding square here, so it's hard to tell where the edge of the frame of the composition is. Even though we can see the two shapes show us scale that the visual contrast is apparent, it's hard to know where they're really sitting in the frame. You can see that again here, where there's multiple contrasts happening. Even though we're looking at space, we're also seeing a difference in scale and we're also seeing a difference in form in shape as well. Try and isolate down to just one contrast, and sometimes it can be a little bit tricky because you might think that you're making something too simple. But these solutions really are quite simple because their singular, they're just looking at one aspect of contrast. In this example, it's very very simple, the only difference is the tonal value, the weight of the two shapes. Here with texture, we can see something similar, not a lot of difference apart from the one thing that we're trying to focus on. It's really just an exercise where we're trying to isolate each aspect of contrast in order to learn about it. Then you can apply those aspects and use them in multiple ways. You could combine them and use them together. But to begin with, we just isolating them to prove that we know how they work and we know what they're doing, and we can control them a little bit as designers. Here without the constraint of the rectangle, again, it's hard to know where the banding bulks of this composition is, so It's hard to achieve read the composition. Here's another set that maybe needs a little bit of help as well, where there's more than one contrast happening. There's a really nice example of scale here, but we've also got a shift in form as well. All it would take to fix this would be for the square to be a circle, and then it would be perfectly okay. With this one we can see that it's getting a little bit overly complicated. Instead of just one contrast it's starting to show two or three different contrasts. That black background instead of the white background doesn't really help, and it starts to become more of a picture, more of an image. It's quite hard to see just that single contrast that we're trying to focus on. The same thing is true here as well. There is direction in this composition, but you also have a change in scale and a change in shape. What that does is it dilutes or waters down the effect of the direction that we're trying to isolate, because there's two or three things going on. You really want to try and isolate the Single Contrast. One of the things to avoid is what you see in this image, where you start to make pictures out of the abstract objects that you're using for your compositions. You don't really want to make a thing or an object, you want to allow your shapes to stay being abstract. Try not to make anything that's recognizable because that interferes with the composition' but it also can stop you seeing the contrast that you're trying to make visible as well. One thing to maybe try and avoid is to use shapes that are less geometric as well. Here you can see there's an oval instead of a circle. The triangle feels a little bit uneven and elongated. That really makes it feel like the objects themselves had been stretched. That purity of form, keeping things geometric can really help you in your composition and there's less distraction there. With texture, we can see that there's much more than texture changing in this image, one is flattened circular, the other is three-dimensional square. There is a lot happening so again, just isolate down to just one aspect of contrast. As I mentioned earlier, one thing to avoid doing is making images. Avoid turning your abstract shapes into pictures, in this case, it makes a face. Also, just avoid color for now and just work in black and white so we can look at the tonal values. We're really trying to just stripped down this exercise into the most basic components possible, and then build them up from there. You don't really want to add to them, you don't want to have extra things going on, it's just an exercise and you have to follow the rules of the exercise in order to succeed. One of the things you can see in this set is that the person is getting too far ahead of themselves. They're trying to do too much in a way they're adding extra elements, they're adding extra collars, they're adding unnecessary texture. What you lose is the focus on contrast. It's hard to know which contrast is being emphasized here and whether they're achieving that goal or not. One of the things about an exercise is that it's not very subjective. You can really tell when something is meeting the criteria of the exercise or not. You can tell when it's working or not. It's a very objective conclusion. We go back and look at this very first set. We can see how even and control they're. We can see that this learner has really isolated just a single aspect of contrast in each one of their compositions.
