How often do you think about contrast in your creations? What is your definition of it?
Join me on this first design focused episode discussing the wonderful and crazy principle of contrast. It might not be what you think it is and the many ways you can use it to better communicate through your work may even be quite surprising.
My idea is to talk about design on the first episode of the month, something we can revisit throughout the month, just little bits at a time, making learning or relearning or just being reminded, an effortless experience. Pair these audio lessons with the posts that go with on the podcast’s social media pages (under The Sage Arts podcast) and you’ll have a working or polished up knowledge of design in no time.
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CREDITS:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Episode photo by Sage Bray Varon
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Transcript
Transcription (AI transcribed, unedited. Please excuse the copious errors.)
Hello all my various and uniquely divergent creatives, thank you for joining me on The Sage Arts podcast. I’m still Sage, at least today and I am so so happy that you’re joining me. I am starting something new with you… yes, You will find that I regularly change things up. I’m always trying to improve upon things and it keeps things fresh and interesting.
So, what I want to do is start off each month talking about design. It won’t be a straight up boring lesson, I promise. There’ll be fun stories and are all kinds of metaphorical tidbits on top of the more concrete ideas you can take to your creative projects.
Now, I know some of you may be thinking, ugh, I don’t want to know about design. I don’t want to become overly aware of what I’m doing. I don’t want to be questioning what I do. And that’s okay, you don’t have to and wont’ have to, even after listening to this. All you do is let the words wash over you. Some of it will lodge in your unconscious, some specific things will sit a bit more up front and pop up here and there as you work. The unconscious stuff may work its way to the surface over time or help you make a connection later on. It’s all good regardless. The cool thing about just having exposure to or being reminded of design concepts is that, at the very least, you will have tools you know you can turn to when you’re stumped or want to get out of a rut. You can come back to these podcasts or check out the post on social media I’ll be putting up, so it’ll be here when it makes sense for you to access it.
But in the meantime, just take a passive listen, or an active listen if you are hungry for this and want to take notes. I’ll repost the elements and principles of design chart—I did that a couple months ago too, on Instagram and Facebook so you can reference them, or sign up for the newsletter at thesagearts.com to get the extra material I’m going to be preparing for you over the coming months. Just look for that News and Notices button to get a brief little email on Sunday mornings with the newest episode announcement and links to the extra free material when available.
So as you tell by the title we have a little chat about contrast going on today. This is a design principle that becomes relevant for pretty much every design choice you make and that what I’ll be explaining today along with some examples of how it works and how you can expand it beyond your own creation into your day to day life. Cuz art is life, right!?
Before we do that, you know what we need to do first… I need to do my shout outs and drop a few seconds of info. I wanted to shout out Barbara Berent today. She kindly pointed out that finding a place to just comment was a little tricky to find so I’ve included links to each episode’s official page and that’s where you can put comments specific to the episodes, as well as doing that on those posts on Instagram and Facebook found under The Sage Arts podcast. So, thank you Barbara for helping me improve what I do, even in little ways, and for your encouragement and support.
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Ok, let’s get back to this fun and friendly design stuff. So, how often do you think about contrast in your designs? And what is your definition of it? I know it seems like contrast refers to a show of differences, giving the work some yin and yang and some drama and all that. That’s partly true but that’s a kind of narrow and, I think confusing explanation. So I’m here to clear that up, refine it a bit. Ok?
So, lets start at the top. Although all the principles of design appear, to some degree, in all work, contrast is an integral aspect of every design decision because every combination of like elements, is, in essence, a choice about the contrast between them. We’re talking contrast between the types of —marks, lines, colors, shapes, forms, and textures you use. Those may be fairly obvious but consider that it also affects design principles like rhythm, balance, proportion, movement, and hierarchy.
Ok, ok, let’s back up… I’ve mentioned design elements and design principles. Kind of sound the same but they’re two different things. The elements are your building blocks, the same way your material is what you manipulate to create your art. Principles are the ways you arrange those elements, those building blocks. In other words, HOW you manipulate them. So, elements are WHAT you design with and principles define the ways you work with those elements. Make sense?
Ok, back to this contrast stuff. Just how is contrast so pervasive as to affect every design choice you make, be it an element or a principle?
Well, since contrast is the level of difference between things, any time you have more than one of any element in your design—be it visual objects or just groups of particular types of elements, you create a certain level of contrast. You don’t even have to try to create contrast. It just exists, on a spectrum at least. However, you want to CHOOSE that level of contrast, where on the spectrum of low to high contrast your various choices land in order to fulfill your intention, whatever that may be, for your that specific piece.
So, every time you have more than one line, color, texture, shape, etc., you have the opportunity to choose the degree to which each iteration will be different from the others. And that choice can say so much since contrast contributes to the visual interest, mood, and energy of a piece as well as being employed for emphasis and other compositional considerations, which we’ll get into in just a little bit.
Again, notice that I don’t say that contrast is showing the difference between like elements because, and I don’t think I quite said this yet, contrast can be low, having elements appear more alike than different. That’s why I say “levels of difference”. That way you won’t think that having low contrast is bad. It’s not. It’s only bad or somewhat wrong if it doesn’t help you fulfill your intention for the piece.
(If you are confused by this reference to intention, go back to Episode 1 because absolutely everything in making art, in your creative life, and in your creative business, if you have one, is rooted in your intentions for each of those areas.)
Now, I do need to make note that some noticeable contrast is likely to be an important part of your work, but it doesn’t have to be something obvious like color or values, like light and darks. But differences are what we look for. It helps inform us as to what is important and allows you to manipulate how something is seen. And don’t’ worry… that probably didn’t make a lot of sense but it will.
So, yes, you can have little or no contrast and it’s still a contrast choice. Huge differences between elements like black and white, of course, big and small, rough and smooth, fast and slow… these can be high contrast but you don’t need high contrast to have a successful piece. Yes, a lot of contrast can add drama and interest but… if you don’t want drama and you want the interest to whisper not shout then low contrast will be the language you’ll want to use, at least in part. Some noticeable contrast is usually desired though but it can be with some of the more subtle elements.
Let me give you a non-art example of why all this contrast stuff is important and how to kind of visualize it as we go on… lets talk rollercoasters. Now speed and being way up there on a rollercoaster is a big part of the fun but it’s real thrill is about the ups and downs, the dips and turns, right? Because just going fast up on a high rail isn’t much different than being on a raised freeway or bridge. You probably feel a less exposed in a car and more in control if you’re on a bike, but nonetheless, its cool but not super thrilling, usually.
There is this scene in the film parenthood, a movie from 1989, where the grandmother of the main character, played by Steve Martin, tries to impart some really brilliant wisdom through a rollercoaster metaphor. She basically tells him that she likes rollercoasters because they’re scary and stomach turning and exciting and thrilling, all at the same time. Because you go up and down and up and down… things aren’t steady, like it would be on a merry-go-round. Its just a lot more thrilling to have the contrast in the ride. That’s what makes contrast so useful. It gives us differences to discover and highlights the kind of “ups and downs” of the visual characteristics.
Another thing contrast does is allows us to manipulate how things are seen. Whether you realize it or not, we judge pretty much everything on its relation to something else. A good burger at a fast food place would probably be considered awful in a high end, $50 a plate restaurant. That’s because the fast food burger is compared to other fast food burgers, when you’re choosing a drive through option but compared to the things on the high end menu, it’s not up to par.
I think that way about vacations. I hear people say they wish they could stay at their vacation spot forever, or they look forward to retirement because they think it’s going to be one long relaxing vacation. But here’s the thing… vacations are only as amazing as they are because we compare them to our every day lives. If you lived on the beach, say, you might appreciate it a lot but it won’t feel like a vacation. We need the less exciting day to day to show us how amazing a week on a Hawaiian island really is. It’s all relative. And design elements do the same thing when contrasted.
Color is one of the easiest examples. For instance, a nice bright turquoise looks rather light in value when in the company of a deep purple but next to a light peach, turquoise doesn’t seem light at all. So that’s comparing like elements—color—while judging their differences in relation to each other.
Ok, so far, this seems pretty obvious stuff although there is something to be said for being reminded of the obvious, right?
This relative effect works with any element. With shape, for example, a particular circle may seem small when near another circle that is much bigger, creating a contrast in size. Such as drawing a golfball next to a melon—the golfball looks small, even though, next to a pearl, the golfball would be huge. However, that one circle’s smallness disappears if the other circle is of a similar size, visually. So if the melon is sitting on a table across the room, while the golfball is right in front of you, a drawing of that scene may have them drawn the same size for a realistic representation so even though we know those objects are different sizes in the real world, they aren’t in the image and so that actually eliminates the size contrast in the drawing. Having a contrast in size can help us determine which is more important. Bigger is usually more important but certainly not always, depends on the elements used. So in this melon-golfball image we’re imagining you can’t guess by size which is important because there isn’t any real difference. But there are a principles of design in play, hierarchy being the big one in this case, that make us see the golfball as more important, mostly because its in the front and yeah, big seems important to us, but not having that information because of a lack of contrast there, we look at position and front is more important than things in the back, usually. We’ll actually touch on that again.
Before you get tired of me saying “usually and sometimes” and the like understand that design elements and principles do not operate individually. They all interact, just like a dinner party can change dramatically by the entrance of a couple of new people or a couple bottles of wine, the elements you have in your work changes as you introduce new elements, or remove elements. They all have an effect on each other. Unless you relegated them to the front porch and they start their own little party off in their own little area. You see, so many possible exceptions if we try to assign too many specifics here. But we’ll talk in general terms as to how certain choices affect your work to give you some solid points to work from for now.
So, as I was saying, contrast is often relative but basically contrast is something that can be adjusted to make the same types of things in your work more alike or less alike.
Now high contrast, what a lot of people feel they need to be after, when the difference is big and obvious, can make the work feel quite dramatic, not just for the piece but, because of relativeness, for the individual elements. In other words, the differences can exaggerate characteristics. Bright colors can look brighter when paired with nuetrals, wavy lines will usually feel more energetic when paired with straight, and especially horizontal lines (horizontal gives off a sense of calm). It’s like when your very lively friend comes with you to visit with a group of, say, buddahist monks. Her lively banter may now seem loud and obnoxious in their quiet meditative gardens but may seem rather meek at the punk rock concert the next night. Yeah, who would visit monks one day and go to a punk concert the next? Well, I would so, color me odd.
So now, you’ve been well warned and prepared for the role of relativity in contrast so let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about the ways contrast affects a pieces. You can change up the contrast for many reasons. Let’s outline the big ones:
- It helps determine the energy of the piece—usually higher contrast is more energy, lower contrast is calmer or queiter—like the difference between merry go rounds and rollercoasters but that does depend on the energy of other elements—like you can use complementary hues such as blue and orange so a contrast in hues, and fully saturated, they can be quiet energetic together. But use pastel versions of them—now working with the chroma (the intensity of the color) and the value, and the energy may not be very high because the value starts to become more alike and the chorma is similarly diminished. And if you did dark versions of them, added a lot of black, the piece could feel heavy which can also bring down the energy. So yeah, you can fine tune a lot of the contrast by tweaking various characteristics of your elements to collectively create the energy you want.
- It can also create tension, especially when a lot of your elements and princliples are high contrast. I’ll give you an example in a moment. But let’s get through a few more of these.
- Contrast is super important when playing with the principles of rhythm and movement. Because, remember, relatively plays a role so if you have something solid and still like a big heavy looking shape outlined with a steady, definitive line, but then have a ton of tiny shapes or wavy erratic lines, the movement of those busier elements is going to be emphasized. And the order in which those lines appear, small-large-small-large, or straight-wavy-straight, that creates rhythm… and that kind of rhythm is only possible if there are differrece in the lines–it’s the contrast, or lack of it, between the elements that creates the rhythm, even to the point of super low contrast which comes across like a regular beat such as bars of a cage or even flower petals. With little or no difference in the repeated shapes, the rhythm is steady. Put some contrast into the rhythm and you have energy and movement. Right?
- Contrast can helps develop a hierarchy—show what’s most importance to least important in the work, which will help lead the viewers eye around because we as viewers look for direction, (what is this about, what is the focus?) and then check out everything else based on what we see as the focus (commonly) and contrast can help by emphazing elements through comparisons—things that are bigger, brighter, more fluid, more energetic, etc. will stand out. So a bike will stand out in a park if surrounded by trees and bushes and mostly organic things because of it’s manmade symmetry, geometric shapes and straight lines. The path it’s on, maybe a winding gravel path, will feel like the next most important because it’s more like the bike in that its manmade, even though it’s not straight but it’s not a busy organic element either. So the eye will probably go to the bike first then the path then the trees, that kind of thing, right? The same bike will probably not stand out so much if painted on a downtown city street.
- Contrast creates relationships. There is story in most all art, even if its really subtle or hard to verbalize, because we as humans ultimately try to determine the relationship between the parts we see in a work and that is the basis for whatever bit of story our brains come up with, consciously or unconciously. Contrast tells us about those relationships. Are the same types of elements alike or unalike? Do they get along? Do they clash? Do they seem unaware of each other? Do they depend on each other? Every part of your work has numerous characteristics. The more characteristics that are produced in high contrast, the more unalike the related parts seem. So if you had two trees in an image and they were exactly the same in every way, you’d think they were related, like they were twins, born together, going through life together. But if one was short stunted and basically a skeleton of a tree, and the other was full, tall and lush, you think of them as strangers or maybe adversaries and the big one won by grabbing all the sunshine. But if they are just as tall and just as lush and everything… except for the color of their leaves, we start to ask why one is green and the other is, say, yellow. Is the tree with the yellow leaves just anxious to get a jump on fall weather? Is it trying to be unique and stand out? Is it sick? Did the other tree cause it’s sicknees? Does the other one care?… So, you see how much contrast creates these possible scenarios in the viewers mind, even if they aren’t fully aware of it, not to the extent I just explained it. But it does affect the viewer and the impact and story of your piece.
How do you bring this all together?
Take a piece that is all circles and squares and black and white—this can be a painting, art jewelry, a photograph, mosaics, even ceramics. Just put this in the context of your medium. Let’s say it’s all the same texture—flat matte. You have high contrast in shapes and in value. Rather high energy, right? Well, does the fact that the texture is all the same with no contrast diminish that? Not really, because it recedes to the point of not even being noticed. Texture is often treated like a background so it can do that.
Now if all the shapes are the same size (size is a principle of how the element is being used) it ends up feeling like a pattern not a composition with something to say or something to be discovered, because there is not enough contrast to create things like rhythm in the pattern and that means no interesting relationships. Now, vary the size of the shapes– and then all the other principles can really come out to play, now that there is some contrast in principles to work with. How much you contrast their size along with how you arrange them–orderly like or random or somewhere in between…maybe some orderly and others random to increase contrast in your pattern and rhytym—see… you can create noticeable rhythm then increase the contrast withing it. All these choices will help create the story and relationships viewers inherently look for.
So now we have this black and white graphic thing with energy, rhythm, potential relationships. Push your most important element—say you decide it’s this one square—you have to do something to tell us it’s important. So you can make it solid black and all the other shapes are white with black outlines…then that black one will become your focal point, even if it’s small, because it contrasts in color and in line (it has no border so no line). It just needs to be on top of all the other shapes to help cement its hierarchy aka position of importance because important things aren’t usually buried behind other things (although you could have it peeking out from behind something, it just might need more contrast in another principle or element like being red or being big to help convince us it’s important) … just something contrasting the rest to show it’s your focal point and where the eye will likely start its journey around your piece.
I know this is hard, being all auditory but can you see hints of what I’m referring to? Does it make you super curious to go through some of your past or in progress work and see what contrast is doing for you there? That’s a great thing to do when we’re done.
Now, when trying to determine the role of contrast in any one piece, consider how much energy, tension, and drama your intention needs and then look to your elements of design for options to increase or decrease contrast as needed. Adjust the characteristic of your different marks, lines, shapes, forms, colors, and textures, checking as you make the adjustments to see if relativity has snuck in and pushed it too far.
So, I bet you’re seeing that contrast, like everything else, is part of a mix of decisions that all have to play well together. I do find contrast a great place to start though since it can help you make decisions in so many other areas. Once you work with contrast as a guiding decision for other choices, you will probably start seeing more ways that contrast speaks for you, whether through the implied energy, the way high contrast can bring emphasis to a particular section or set of elements, or even metaphorically.
Questioning your use of contrast is also a great way to examine work you aren’t pleased with. Maybe you’re not happy with the shapes because they are too much alike or things feel chaotic because there is just too much of a difference between the types of lines you are using. Try adjusting the contrast between those elements and see if that doesn’t bring the work to a much better place.
So, with this conversation, my only hope is that you become a bit more aware of contrast, and know that you have control over it. Of course, Some of your choices for contrast will be made automatically if you make characteristic choices for your elements before specifically thinking about contrast, like choosing just daisies for a flower piece or choosing green and red as your color palette because it’s for Christmas. Repeated daisies, for instance will dictate rather low levels of variation because of the sameness of the primary motif so you’d have to work with contrast in things like value and size, texture and marks, to take it up a notch. And Christmas colors are high contrast so it would be difficult to make the work also feel calm or serene starting from that color palette unless you contrast it those with a lot of white, you know, put in a lot of snow like elements. Then the main colors can be more accents, taking down the energy a notch.
And there’s one more thing I want to point out. Contrast is not just important to your creative pieces. It is, in so many ways, necessary for living a happy life. So, contrast your studio tiem with time outdoors, or traevling or hanging out with friends. Contrast your usual medium with little forays into other mediums just to shake up your creative thinking and keep you excited with new things. Every once in a while try doing something wholly unlke your usual work. If you work small, try big, If you use bring colors, try nuetrals or dark colors, just see what happens.
IN any case, I hope you enjoyed this little design lesson. This one was a bit more conceptual than most will be so we’ll be digging into things a bit more concretely in future months. Just let me know what you think about this being a regular thing and whether my explanations without visuals worked for you. You can write me on the contact page at thesagearts.com, leave a comment on the episode page using the link in the show notes or the episode page on thesagearts.com. Or, as mentioned earlier, jump in on Facebook or Instagram on the sagearts podcast page and leave a comment or send me a message. All these links are in the show notes too.
And I do suggest checking in on the oscial media pages often because I’m creating posts to support these little lessons and just little pokes about it can make this info subconcious and automatic and you might see improvements without even trying. It really does work that way. Its why they say you should see lots of art as an artist and read lots of books as a writer because just exposure will teach a lot of what you need to know.
So until next time, build contrast into your life as needed, feed that muse, stay true to your version of weirdness and I’ll chat with you next time on the sage arts podcast
