Design Principles: Organizing Intervals

There are, correspondingly, only certain fundamental variations in the form of graphic elements, and organizational schemes for these variations are the most basic of design "principles". Organizational principles, in any art, are based on control of the intervals between elements. For the visual artist, such as the graphic designer, intervals exist in a spatial dimension: between shapes, sizes, colors, etc. Musicians commonly organize temporal intervals: between pitches, beats, and musical lines. Designers of hypertext, like dancers, must be doubly articulate—in the language of intervals between elements in both space and time. Fortunately, the fundamental methods for organizing intervals are largely the same from art to art, and across dimensions. We give three of the most basic organizing principles for intervals on the following page.