My thoughts and observations on Chapter 2 Proximity

The first thing that I learned was that physical closeness in Design implies that the objects have a relationship. Therefore, grouping like elements together shows that relationship. The opposite of that notion is that if elements are not related, do not group them together. Another key fact that I learned was often designers are afraid of empty space and will fill in corners and this will make the design appear to be scattered. Grouping like elements will make things appear to be more organized. It was very neat to see how just making a change in grouping of the like elements could create clarity in the design. It is amazing how our brains work and automatically arrange things in our minds.

Another profound lesson that I learned was that it was ok to use different fonts in one design and how doing this can also change the whole look and feel of the design. I am starting to see how all of the principles must work together even though we are focusing on one at a time in these next few chapters. The main theme that I took away from the chapter on proximity is that it is used to organize your design.

One last note about this chapter, the term White Space was used a lot but not clearly defined. I believe that it is in fact the areas in white there are not print or graphics. I however did look for a definition in Wikipedia and found that it was “In page layout, illustration and sculpture, white space is often referred to as negative space. It is that portion of a page left unmarked: the space between graphics, margins, gutters, space between columns, space between lines of type or figures and objects drawn or depicted.”