chapter 5 response

The reading for chapter 5 spoke of the seven design components. These components were Unity, Space, Gestalt, Dominance, Hierarchy, Balance and Color. A few things that I found interesting about the reading was that, under the balance section, the author states that balance does not necessarily mean symmetry. Both symmetrical and asymmetrical balances are acceptable tools, and dependant on what you want the design to communicate. The section also defined balance as the correct amount of information, meaning that if there is too much information, the design is unbalanced as well. Another thing I found was in the color section, even though my printout was done in color, I was thrown off by the sentence “you read this first didn’t you?” No I didn’t. I assume this is because when reading a page of a book, you assume the information is sequential, with each sentence placed in a precise order to increase one’s understanding of the subject, and though I probably noticed the red text when I turned the page, I didn’t bother reading it first because it was in a block of text and I guess my brain decided in a split second, that the information wouldn’t have as much meaning if read out of order. Perhaps my brain is too methodical to have fallen for this trick, but I’m still a little curious-- if not outright skeptical-- as to whether any other students actually did fall for it.