Art and Design
Composition: The art of arranging elements.
The concept of design composition was discussed publicly as far back as 1435. Leon Battista Alberti was considered one of the first designers but also one of the first art theorists. In his book, On Painting, he dissected visual design composition into these five concepts: balance, emphasis, alignment, proximity, and rhythm.
Composition is one of the most foundational concepts of art and visual design. It is the arrangement of visual elements and their organization in order to produce an aesthetically-pleasing or interesting arrangement.
The practice of design and composition is rooted in geometry and mathematics that have been around for centuries.
The key characteristic that distinguishes composition from other areas of graphic design, such as typography or color theory, is that it concerns itself with the placement and ordering of pictorial components within a space. In other words, if you can imagine the arrangement of objects in a space, then you can visualize how that would be composed.
The word composition is often confused with a similar word, compose. Although they…
