Canva

Canva is a graphic design website from Australia. It's used to create infographics, presentations, and social media stuff or whatever, and provides templates for all of them. To teach us more about design, our STEAM teacher had us explore the Canva platform and learn the elements of design for future use.

Canva Website

Line

Direction

Horizontal: Calm, like laying down.
Vertical: Defies gravity and has power.
Diagonal: If you read left-to-right and the line stretches bottom-left to top-right, this shows ascent. Top-left to bottom-right shows decent. And if you read right-to-left, it's backward.

Angularity

Sharp: Dangerous.
Smooth: Safe
Random: Organic

Rhythm

Rhythmic: Order
Irregular: Unpredictable

Style

Dashed/Dotted: A trail to follow.
Variable Width: Swift and speedy.
Texture: It's personal like handwriting.

Shape

Geometric

Circle: Eternal and full.
Triangle: Balance and direction.
Rectangle: Structured, man-made, intelligence.

Modified

Sharp: Exact.
Rounding: Safe and comfortable.
Skew: 3D and speed.
Rotating: Balanced or unbalanced.

Organic

Symmetry: Equal, balanced, human connection.
Asymmetry: Natural and chaotic.

Space

Fade, vanishing, and perspective.
Width, height, and depth.
The layers of foreground and background.

Positive/Negative

Everything can create two images.
Can create visual interest.

Whitespace

More space equals more emphasis.
Close is claustrophobic and playful.
Consistencies show order.

Color

Color Properties

Hue: The color.
Saturation: The intensity of that color.
Value: How bright that color is.
Tine: A mix of white.
Shade: A mix of black.

What Not To Do

Use too many hues and cause chaos.
Use too much saturation and burn your eyes.
Use too little value and lack contrast.

Texture

Method

Actual: Appears as real texture.
Implied: Immitation of texture.

Function

Identity: Texture is used to understand what is seen.
Spatial Orientation: Direction and movement.

Character

Rough vs smooth.
Hard vs soft.
Glossy vs matte.

Canva Design Challenge

Now that we researched the elements of design, it was time to prove how much we know about them. There were several design prompts, and I chose Sandpaper Dermotogolist Annoying.

Elements Of Design Used:

Line: I used line to direct attention to the center of the image. The hands of the doctor and the sandpaper are implied diagonal lines that all point to the middle. The implied lines of the sandpaper leave sharp and dangerous edges, while the implied lines of both the woman and doctor are smooth and organic. There isn't much rhythm, which is agitating. Lastly, I outlined the woman in a more hand-drawn style to show how human she is compared to the alien doctor and sandpaper.

Shape: The most geometric shapes are the circles for the acne and rectangles for the sandpaper, showing a large contrast in both of their meanings. Because the sandpaper is so sharp, you want to run away, and it rotates along the edge of the image and disrupts the balance. The woman's shape is more organic, as she's an organic living being, and the doctor is as well. Yet, I used the doctor's asymmetrical hand and combined it with the sandpaper to create disorder.

Space: The woman sits behind the doctor and his sandpaper, so I slightly faded her features to show which subject is closer. It also helps that the hands are layered over her. The negative space of this image is the dark background. Instead of showing her full body or face, I emphasized the woman's forehead and ance as the focal point. The doctor's hands are not small either and crowd around her, kind of claustrophobic and out of order.

Color: I used mostly warm colors, the only cool ones being the doctor's hands and the woman's hair. The most intense colors come from the acne and sandpaper, which I believed are the most important subjects of the image. I wanted to saturate and brighten the sandpaper so much that it made your eyes want to bleed, I did it on purpose. The woman is not as bright as her acne because her condition is the focus.

Texture: The doctor's gloves already had a smooth and clean texture, so I left them be. I experimented the most with sandpaper, to create the rippled paper effect and the scratchy surface. To contrast with the painful texture of that, the woman's features are soft, yet bumpy from acne.

Peer Review

"I love the design but the one problem for me is i don't see where its supposed to be annoying."

"It has great detail."

"This makes me wanna never touch sandpaper or even look at it, it's really good."

"My first impression is that it's very chaotic and has more of a surreal feel, which I like because it's more of an artistic interpretation than just an image of the prompt."

"I like the hand-drawn feeling of the dermatologist and the outside felt very chaotic and annoying."

Overall Design 9.2

Reflection Thinking

I was surprised by the scores I received because I felt a bit lost when coming up with the idea. I constantly felt like I needed to follow how the elements of design affect the brain, even though they didn't all affect my brain in the same way.

One element I struggle with is texture, because I never visually find a texture nice or not, it's simply a touch. For the Sandpaper Dermatologist Annoying image, I faltered with shapes: I knew the sandpaper was rectangular and the woman round, but couldn't see a more creative way to use that element yet. What I did think back about and reflect on is the use of color. Because I was already using so many warm colors, placing a cool one in certain areas would show a special difference there- I just can't think of where I would put it, though.

Even though it was ranked the lowest on peer review, I liked the way I used implied lines to point the viewer's eyes to the center- it's okay that most of my peers didn't see it that way, it would've helped if they were more than implied lines. They did say the best element used was space with the woman's face taking up most of the page and being crowed by the doctor. I think I could have used space better by creating more depth in the layers of foreground and background and blurring the farther subjects.

I think it's really cool that we learned about art and design because I can use what we were taught in this lesson. And I think overall, this has been my most successful STEAM project.