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Knolling the Principles & Elements of Design

Learning how to perceive, name, describe, and manipulate visually-accessed information is an important component of an information designer’s education. Whether its creating a poster, an info graphic, an instructional manual, a web site, or an app, the principles and elements of design help us construct visually-based material in ways that are effective, meaningful, useful, usable, and impactful. In this 1st-year visual communication course, students create a new knoll every week for 10 weeks, then post it to their blog. Each knoll has a theme and emphasizes a different principle or element of design.

Knoll: a curated group of items that forms a composition and conveys an idea (concept).

  1. Shape: 20 items that mean something to you.
  2. Size: 20 new items that mean something together.
  3. Value: The same 20 items organized in a different way.
  4. Space: 20 items that mean something to you about Valentine’s Day.
  5. Contrast: Different 20 items that somehow change the meaning of Valentine’s Day—consider metaphor.
  6. Repetition: 50 items.
  7. Hierarchy: 15 to 30 items knolled in public.
  8. Colour: Minimum of 20 items.
  9. Balance: Minimum of 30 of the same item.
  10. Your best knoll.

Credits

Course: COMM 1620 Foundation of Graphics, Winter 2018

Taught by: Milena Radzikowska

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