If you come from an art background, much of this week's lesson will be familiar territory for you, since it applies to virtually all art forms. Creating a pleasing finished product - whether a painting, a sculpture, or a scrapbook layout - requires the artist to apply certain principles of artistic design. The human eye and mind respond, either favorably or unfavorably, to an artistic piece according to how well the artist has employed these elements of design. We've already discussed the importance of balance and symmetry. In addition, it is helpful to have a sense of the elements of proportion, line, shape, and focus so that you can use them effectively in your creations.
On any page, you will have pieces that are different sizes. Your photos may be large, glossy 8"x10"'s, or they might be closely-cropped 1" squares. More often, they will fall somewhere in between - most of my own photos start out as 4"x6" prints. Titles may be large or small. Journaling may be full-page treatises, or a simple date. Part of your job as the page's designer is to select and use elements together that not only match in conventional ways (color, texture, "feel"), but are in proportion to one another. Proportion may also be referred to as "scale."
Most scrapbookers would agree that the photos in a scrapbook should take center stage and be the star of any given layout. So while you might love that 8" square paper-piecing you spent hours making, it will overpower the 3" square photo of your niece in her Ballerina costume. I would recommend either that you blow the photo up to a size more proportional to the embellishment, or that you create a smaller embellishment. And if you don't know what "paper-piecing" is, then don't worry - we'll cover that next week.
In this week's Tools, Tips, and Techniques lesson, you learned about sketches. You can create a layout from a sketch, but you can also create a sketch from a layout. Looking at a sketch will tell you where its lines are. Some lines might stretch across the entire width of the page (as with a ribbon that goes from one side of the layout to the other); others are shorter (as with the lines representing the perimeter of a photo). Some lines are perpendicular; others might be angular, or even curved.
The lines you employ in a layout will help determine its mood. Horizontal and vertical lines add gravity, while diagonal and curved lines add movement and vibrancy. A great layout will strike a pleasing balance between the two.
It's obvious that everything you put on your page will have a shape of its own - your pictures might be rectangular, your journaling block could be square, you might use a circular metal-rimmed tag as an accent. In addition, the patterned paper, ribbon, and other materials you use could have inherent shapes that become part of your design. In order to produce a cohesive finished product, where all of the various elements work with rather than against one another, you should make an effort for your shapes to reappear throughout the layout.
If you use a ribbon with dots on it, consider using a patterned paper with circles on it, or cropping your photos into circles, or putting circle punches in a pleasing pattern on your journaling box. Just remember to vary the scale (or proportion) of the shapes you use to keep the layout engaging.
Most of the time, you will probably use more than one photo per layout. Photos might be different in size, subject, angle, color composition, or any number of other ways. Even so, most of the time there will be one photo that dominates the others, that "speaks louder" than the others. Usually this "focal photo" is taken at a closer range, has more vibrant colors, is crisper, lacks distracting background elements, better "tells the story," or in some other way is simply a better photo. The trick is to use the power of this photo to your advantage to make the overall layout more forceful. To do that, you need to make the Power Picture the focus of your layout.
There are several ways to make a certain photo your layout's focus. They include:
Remember, the point is not to overwhelm the photo's natural power with a lot of "stuff"; just to help accent its natural strength.
Scan through at least six layouts in scrapbooking magazines. Evaluate their use of the design elements discussed in this lesson - proportion, line, shape, and focus. Jot down your impressions.
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