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When describing art, space can be divided into positive and negative space. Texture is what it feels like to touch something, or what something looks like it might feel like if it were touched.
Definitions
- Space - The area or volume that's occupied (or not occupied) by something.
- Texture - The way it feels to touch something, or what something looks like it might feel like if it were touched.
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Next up is space and texture.
0:00
These next elements of art and design
tend to focus less on concrete ideas,
0:03
like lines and shapes, and
put more focus on their characteristics.
0:07
Let's take a look.
0:12
When describing art, space can be divided
into positive and negative space.
0:14
Positive space is the area or
volume that's occupied by something.
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On a webpage,
it might be a block of text, a button, or
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a shape that contains some other elements.
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Negative space is everything else, which
designers sometimes call white space.
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This is the area where there is nothing.
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Let's take a look at an example.
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The Google homepage makes extensive
use of negative space and
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this helps direct your attention.
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It's hard to look at anything else
except what's in the middle of the page.
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The place where you should look
to take action is self-evident,
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because there's barely anything else
to look at or interact with, however,
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most websites are more complicated,
so let's do a search.
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When the search results come up the page
still makes use of positive and
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negative space.
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This time, the positive space is
occupied by the search results,
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and a few content boxes, and
the negative space is blank like always,
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but what you should notice is
how negative space is used.
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They could've bunched up the search
results close together, or
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they could've separated each
one with a horizontal line, but
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instead they chose to put some
negative space between each one.
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There's also a margin along the left, and
right sides to help frame the content.
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This creates a very natural and
clean separation, and
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while that might seem like an obvious idea
when it's right in front of our eyes,
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a surprising number of new designers
forget to include room for negative space.
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Imagine if there was very little
space between each result,
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and if they were pushed up against
the side of the browser window or
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the screen, the results would be
pretty difficult to scan quickly, and
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the design would feel very cramped.
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The next element of art design is texture.
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Texture is what it feels
like to touch something or
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what something looks like it might
feel like if it were touched.
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For example,
an orange has a bumpy surface, but
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a pear can sometimes feel fuzzy, and
an apple is generally smooth to the touch,
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but at the same time, it still has
some visual texture on its surface.
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The most common example of texture
in software is blocks of text,
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and although we might
think of them as words,
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visually the objectification of form
through mass, like a crowd of people, or
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jumble of the letters, can make it
appear as one textured surface.
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Texture can be used to break up
flat surfaces or help to slow
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down the viewers eye and cause them to
examine something for a little bit longer.
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For example, when a solid color or
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a gradient is used as a background
sometimes it can be desirable to include
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some noise to help break up the monotony
of the surface and add some character.
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Texture can also make
things feel more tangible.
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A line that looks like a brush stroke, or
a background that looks like old paper,
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might convey a hand-crafted mood for
an artisan food vendor or a classy event.
3:53
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