The Principle of Art That Indicates the Movement by Repetition of Elements or Objects

Let's look at iii subjects that, at first glance, may strike you as being incredibly basic and self-explanatory. However, although they may seem similar they should need no introduction, we should study them. By understanding these concepts, y'all'll be able to use them more effectively to captivate your users' attending while making your designs more effective.

Say "repetition" and yous might think about someone who says the same thing over and over over again. However, it's unlike in design. Repeating things does not take to be boring! In fact, information technology can empower a blueprint when used in the right way. Information technology tin also ensure that messages are better understood. Equally designers, we have three repetition methods: repetition, patterns, and rhythm.

Repetition

Repetition is simply repeating a single element many times in a design. For example, you could describe a line horizontally and then draw several others side by side to it.

Repetition can be useful in spider web and app design. For instance, yous'd await the logo of a business organization to exist repeated on every page and in the same identify. Carte du jour items are also often repeated in the same place on a page. This helps provide a consistent user experience. Past repeating elements, we as designers not only deliver according to our users' expectations in this way, only nosotros also improve their experience. Our existence consistent makes the users more comfy. Remember that the eye works in a certain way by default. Using repetition to keep the heart familiar with our design'due south elements means we're taking advantage of this tendency. We tin can besides use shapes, colors, textures, fonts, etc. to maintain this consistency via repetition.

You tin can also achieve repetition by using repeated messages. If yous desire your customers to know that y'all're the cheapest or the fastest in the business, you'll want to tell them that on more than one occasion if you desire the message to stick. In this example, nosotros use repetition for reinforcement. Y'all may remember learning your times tables by repeating them until you drummed them into your mind. The principle here is the aforementioned. We retain information better the more often we run across it and internalize information technology.

Blueprint

Patterns are but a repetition of more than one blueprint chemical element working in concert with each other. A seamless design is one where every element within a pattern (no thing how often it's repeated) combines to course a whole. This is nigh common in backgrounds on web and app pages. It'southward also popular in carpet and wallpaper blueprint. Look effectually you: your bed cover, wall, notebook cover. If you lot meet a seamless pattern, look at it closely. Practice you see how the elements (circles, spirals, cones, pineapples, etc.) appear once more and once again in the same mode? Sometimes, they touch; sometimes, they have space between them.

Author/Copyright holder: Dirk Stoop. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC 2.0

As you might expect, designers base most patterns on colors, textures and shapes, rather than words. We can recognize shapes far more speedily than words, which we have to read, no matter how quickly. You tin observe such patterns in architecture, besides. Architects tend to include a unifying motif on the inside and outside of buildings to enhance the artful appeal. This is nothing new. Think of ancient Greek buildings such every bit the Parthenon. Aboriginal designers could exist ingenious in their employ of patterns of such elements equally lines and spirals.

When you consider using patterns in your spider web or app design, y'all'll want to think about the pattern'due south complication. While information technology might seem similar a squeamish idea to tile a unmarried image as a background, this can make it much harder to read the text that lies over the pattern. If you want to create a pattern for a site that deals with travel to Hellenic republic, y'all could use the top of an ancient column for your pattern. At start, it looks bang-up; y'all've got a cute blueprint that features circles and grape leaves.

Nevertheless, yous however have to add together text. And then, writing over this, y'all soon notice a problem. The dark writing sometimes falls over the image'southward nighttime lines. Yous could use brighter text, such as white or yellow, only y'all'll observe that the greyness rock makes it difficult to read, besides. You're having problem reading it, and then will your users. They want to engage with your design, not piece of work to attempt and read text. Simplicity and subtlety are key considerations if you want to maintain the user feel, keeping users on your page.

Rhythm

When you repeat elements, the intervals between those repetitions can create a sense of rhythm in the viewer and a sense of movement. Musicians create rhythm in the spacing between notes, effectively making these "silent" gaps play off the notes. Designers insert spacing between elements to make rhythm. In that location are, broadly speaking, five types of visual rhythm.

Author/Copyright holder: Eden-Lys. Copyright terms and licence: CC By-NC-ND ii.0

Random rhythm – Repeating elements with no specific regular interval creates random rhythms. The spacing could be a millimeter here, a centimeter there, while the elements could be all over the place. Think of falling snowfall, pebbles on a beach, traffic movements: they are all examples of random rhythms in action.

It's as well worth noting that a rhythm may appear random if you examine a small section of the rhythm. However, if you step dorsum and examine a larger section, it may be that there is a regular but complex rhythm applied to the pattern. Remember that y'all take positive and negative images, which you lot tin use so that both the elements and the spaces betwixt them make your design hard to "predict". Past using a larger series of elements, yous'll have nearly limitless possibilities to play with. The artist René Magritte made particularly interesting use of random rhythm.

Regular rhythm – Like the chirapsia of a center, the regular rhythm follows the same intervals over and over once again. You tin hands make a regular rhythm just by creating a filigree or a series of vertical lines. The user's center will instantly recognize a regular rhythm, scanning it for any irregularities in the process. Remember, the eye "likes" to exist fatigued to outstanding elements. Therefore, in that location is a risk that when yous're using a regular rhythm in a design that it tin can become monotonous (like the dripping of a tap).

Alternating rhythm – You tin repeat more than 1 element in a design. In an alternating design, yous use a 1-2-i-2-ane-two pattern. Recall of the black and white squares on a chessboard: that'due south an alternate rhythm in play. An alternating rhythm is, in fact, a regular rhythm with more than complexity. Information technology could be as straightforward equally our chessboard, or nosotros could envision something more intricate. Some fantastic alternate rhythms include rows of fish, birds, or other animals. Taking fish as an example, we can see that each identical fish is following another. Below, the sequence is repeated; however, the negative infinite betwixt the rows shows fish of the other colour (which we have to be the background) swimming the other manner, the fine lines of their fins and tails interlocking with those of the first pattern of fish. M.C. Escher'due south Lizard (1942) is another bully example of this, incorporating iii colors of lizards with a pair of lizards of each color facing abroad from each other, tail to tail. As simple or circuitous as we desire to make an alternate rhythm, it can be an easy fashion to pause up the monotony of a regular rhythm.

Flowing rhythm – A flowing rhythm shows the repeated elements post-obit bends, curves, and undulations. In nature, yous can encounter this in the waves on a beach or sand dunes. As designers, we tin can mimic nature past making wonderful patterns of elements with flowing rhythm. We can evidence clumps of seaweed underwater, their strands gently facing in a series of directions. The user imagines them washing against each other.

Progressive rhythm – Nosotros can brand a progressive rhythm just past irresolute 1 characteristic of a motif as we echo it. Nosotros could draw a serial of circles, ane to a higher place the other, making each lower one larger. Do yous encounter how the largest one at the bottom looks like it's closest to you? Nosotros tin brand a progressive rhythm alter subtly or dramatically. You could add together shade to the smaller circles progressively then that the smallest one at the top is dark, the middle one in partial shade, and the biggest one only slightly shaded. Progressive rhythms environment us. If you were to video someone dancing and then examine that video frame-by-frame, you would take a progressive rhythm.

Designing with Repetition, Pattern, and Rhythm

The use of repeated visual elements is a technique designers commonly apply in spider web design. Y'all tin can echo pattern elements, for example, to provide a consistent visual experience. It volition make it easier for users to focus on the content because they know where they can observe specific types of content or navigation options.

You tin too use repetition to draw attention to a particular area of content or pattern. Yous can use it to show relationships betwixt content blocks, too.

Also, you can use patterns for backgrounds to add texture and consistency, and y'all can deploy them to evangelize consistency between pages of the same type.

As designers, we tin utilise rhythm to create excitement (edifice gradually over time) or reassurance (a heartbeat might be perfect on a folio aimed at expectant mothers, for example). Or, we can use it to influence other emotions.

The Take Away

As a designer, you have three types of repetition:

• Repetition
• Patterns
• Rhythm

You can utilize these to shape the user experience of your spider web or app. Through repetition, patterns, or rhythm, you lot gear up "the mood" of the user interface and use these elements to either reinforce your message and/or create the expect and feel of your production.

Repetition is the simplest element you tin employ. Blueprint is a combination of elements that are repeated. Rhythm involves using intervals or spaces between elements to requite the user an impression of rhythm or motion. Nosotros can use five types of rhythm:

• Random Rhythm
• Regular Rhythm
• Alternating Rhythm
• Flowing Rhythm
• Progressive Rhythm

At that place is also another conception of pattern that comes from architect Christopher Alexander. We volition examine that in a later article. Rhythm, like in music, helps build a cadence in your design, engaging your users with all sorts of interesting variations. With some thought, you can maximize the impact of your message by working the right rhythm into your design.

References & Where to Learn More

• Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Jonas Bengtsson. Copyright terms and licence: CC Past 2.0
• Pattern in Art: Repetition, Design, and Rhythm. Sophia Learning. Retrieved from: http://www.sophia.org/tutorials/pattern-in-art-repetition-pattern-and-rhythm. [2014, Aug]
• Swinburne. Basic Design Principles. Retrieved from: http://world wide web.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/design/design/#four. [2014 Aug]

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Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/repetition-pattern-and-rhythm

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