Balance in visual design refers to the distribution of visual weight of elements in a composition. In more simpler terms, if all the objects in a piece of artwork were put on their own scale, how would their weights compare to one another? That’s the concern of visual balance. In my experience, balance is easy to spot, but difficult to qualify. This is because you can look at the balance between any number of objects in a design or as the overall composition.

To understand the different types of balance, we need to look at what affects an element’s visual weight. Besides the obvious (size), these factors include shape, color, value, among other traits. For the word count’s sake, we’ll only look at the first three as an example.

Okay! Now that we know how balance works, let’s talk about three different ways that it can be created. These are the three most significant types of balance in visual design:

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Formal Balance (Symmetrical)

This is the type that I bet you’re most familiar with when I say either “balance” or “symmetry”. Formal balance means that a composition uses symmetry to achieve balance in its design. To boil this down, a piece that uses this method likely has elements mirrored across an axis. In the example above, there’s a clear symmetry between the left and right side of the composition. In formal balance, you’re MUCH less likely to change the way things look across a composition, lest you risk disturbing the visual weight of these elements. What that means is that formal balance is much more restricting than other methods, as there has to remain a consistency across an axis.

Formal balance is seen everywhere in every discipline of design. Architects use it for creating easy-to-navigate floor plans, hardware engineers implement symmetry in designing smartphones, and photographers use symmetry to balance their compositions just like graphic designers. Symmetry is visually pleasing in almost any context and is much easier to achieve than other methods, which is why its so prevalent in design.

Creating symmetry in Adobe Illustrator is as easy as using the ‘reflect’ tool:

1. Select the object you want to create a reflected clone of. Make sure one of the objects side is either flat, or will look decent being flipped around. In this case, I made the right side flat.

2. Navigate to the Object -> Transform -> Reflect option.

3. Depending on your preferred look, you may want to choose otherwise, but in this case, I used a vertical reflection. Illustrator also allows you to reflect horizontally, or at a custom angle. After you’ve decided, click on “Copy”.

4. This will reflect the object and make a copy over the current iteration of it.

5. Move the newly created object into place, and you have yourself a symmetrically balanced composition.

Even though formal balance constrains what you can do with objects in a piece, there are practically infinite possibilities.

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Informal Balance (Asymmetrical)

Informal balance seeks to bend the rules of design by creating a composition that isn’t symmetrical, but rather manipulates the visual weight of objects to create balance. Where symmetry is a simple matter of cloning objects across an axis, informal balance requires much more precision to fine-tune these elements’ visual weights. The ultimate goal is not to create balance between two individual elements in a design, but rather establish balance in the design as a whole.

In the example above, there’s a clear visual weight created on the left side of the piece. This is made by the more complicated geometry, more intense colors and generally darker values shown. To compensate for this, there’s a noticeable light gray negative space on the other side of the piece. It conveys contrasting emotions using this informal balance, and a sort of evolution from left to right.

The piece above is one of the most famous uses of informal balance in art. The complexity and value created by the large wave is offset by the gradient of the sky acting as negative space. Informal balance can also be seen in landscape and portrait photography, some logo design and modern interior design, where symmetrical balance is more or less obsolete.

Because informal balance varies so much, and requires trial and error when placing objects, it’s extremely difficult to provide a tutorial in Illustrator. I can, however provide some tips:

1. Start out with simple shapes. Take 3-5 squares, circles, or other polygons of varying sizes and colors, and arrange them on a canvas to find different layouts that evoke asymmetrical balance.

2. Use white space to your advantage. Often times, informal balance can be established by a lack of elements to compensate for fewer bold ones, such as the tree shape above. The amount of white space in your image can dictate the emotions you want to convey such as expansiveness or claustrophobia.

3 Study images to find real life examples. It’s more likely to find asymmetrical objects in normal life than otherwise. Looking at well-composed images and real life examples can be very helpful for training your brain to build its own well-balanced asymmetrical compositions.

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Radial Balance

Radial balance occurs when elements are balanced around a single point, rather than across an axis. One of the most common examples of this are mandalas or a sunburst pattern. Radial balance can happen in less apparent cases as well, such as spirals and astrophotography. In the example above, dots and lines are repeated around the middle point of an image.

In this picture, star trails are seen around a single point, yet the visual weight of the sky and the foreground are different, meaning this picture is both radially and asymmetrically balanced.

Here’s a quick and easy way to create a radially balanced pattern in Adobe Illustrator:

1. Take an object that you want to rotate around a single point. For this exercise, make sure the point of rotation is in the bottom, middle point of the object (In this case, the point of the pin).

2. Apply the Effect -> Distort & Transform -> Transform.

3. In the dialogue, press the bottom middle square in the anchor point selector (9 squares in bottom left), and increase the number of copies. For this shape, I increased it to 5, for a total of 6 iterations. Next, change the angle of rotation to evenly disperse the copies. Since I had 6 iterations, I needed to place them at 60 degrees from each other (360/6 = 60).

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4. Alternatively, you can adjust the copies and rotation values, then modify the vertical movement to create some even more interesting-looking patterns. Positive and negative values here can offer some cool results.

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In the end, there’s endless possibilities for creating balance in your artwork. Adobe Illustrator makes the process easier, but mastering balance will only come with practice, so try doing some of the exercises above, or experimenting with some of your own techniques!

Sources

https://theblog.adobe.com/what-is-radial-balance/

https://etad.usask.ca/skaalid/theory/cgdt/balance.htm

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/asymmetrical-balance

Among all of the principles of design, rhythm has always left me slightly confused. How do you differentiate rhythm with something like repetition or pattern? What does a music-related term have to do with design? In this case, rhythm is changing elements across an image that evoke musical sentiment. This is pretty open-ended, so let me show you a few ways that you can achieve rhythm using basic techniques in Adobe Illustrator.

1. Use A Dashed Stroke

While this technique can also be applied to the principle of repetition, turning your paths’ strokes from solid to dashed can offer a lot of creativity in design. The consistent repetition of squares and circles, such as in the example above, can evoke a smooth and sometimes peaceful rhythm that, in a visual context, is both professional and modern.

To do this in Illustrator, simply go to your shape’s properties, and under the stroke dialogue, check the “Dashed Line” option. To modify how it looks beyond this, change the weight, shape of the caps, and the dash/gap inputs.

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2. Incorporate Concentric Circles

Another creative way to convey rhythm using repetition is by using concentric circles, or circles that repeat around a point. Similar to diagrams of radio or sound waves propagating, this particular technique can evoke feelings of growth, or ideas spreading. This isn’t limited to circles, either. Other shapes with concentric repetition, such as squares, can offer different looks and evoke different feelings.

How do you achieve this look in Illustrator without copying and pasting circles or other shapes. for hours? We should turn to what’s called the blend tool. Select two objects using this tool and Illustrator will interpolate between these objects along a path. Use the “blend options” dialogue to adjust settings to your liking.

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3. Create Flowing Lines

Smooth, flowing lines are a classic way to provide a rhythmic dynamic to your illustrations. By modifying how chaotic or mellow these curves are, you can drastically change the look of the piece. The example above uses numerous lines in the background, superimposed by a large complementary path to provide visual contrast. What this achieves is a ‘flow’ that you can utilize to lure audiences to a desired focal point.

Much like the concentric circles, you can use paths along with the blend tool in Illustrator to quickly create multiple instances of flowing lines. Try modifying the properties of the starting and ending lines of the Blend to evolve the lines’ shape as it moves.

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4. Break Up the Consistency

The past three techniques have all been about creating consistent patterns to establish rhythm. This method breaks that rule through use of “staccato” rhythm, meaning abrupt changes in color and value. In the example above, sharp edges and a high contrast color scheme establish this staccato rhythm, while maintaining its repetitive and rhythmic nature. This evokes a higher energy in the illustration.

There’s no one preferred method to this technique in Illustrator given its variability, but as a rule of thumb, use shapes with fewer sides such as squares or triangles. To maintain rhythm in the design, try limiting yourself to a few shapes and an established color palette, and avoid repeating elements too consistently.

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5. Add Some Waveforms

If you’re looking to make your design very apparently music-related, adding waveforms is the best way to do so. These are basically visual representations of audio levels across time. They can easily be mimicked in graphic design as spiking paths over a horizontal axis. These elements can add a feeling of ‘loudness’ to a design, making it more visually striking, depending on how the waveforms look.

To make a waveform in Illustrator similar to the one in the example, first create a path that does not extend below a certain point. Duplicate the path, and translate it down. Use the Object -> Reflect transformation to flip it horizontally. This will give you a basic waveform with numerous stylistic possibilities.

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6. Combine Lines and Shapes

Okay, this one sounds pretty vague, but let me explain. Lines and shapes are two components to writing sheet music, and this can be broken down into a more abstract interpretation in design to create visual rhythm. In the example above, the line guides viewers through the composition with the circles and pill shapes being interest points (in musical terms, notes). This piece contains rhythm in its repetition of these notes in a song-like fashion.

Much like the staccato style from above, there’s no one way to achieve this look. Generally it’s more effective to use horizontal lines to lead the viewers’ eyes. Breaking up the lines with the shapes is where the rhythm happens, and its up to you where to put these elements. Much of the process is trial and error, so play around with different shape and line placements to make a strikingly rhythmic composition.

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Be sure to try out some (or all) of these techniques! Adobe Illustrator makes rhythmic and repetitious design very easy and fun. Thank you for reading and be sure to check out some of my other tutorials.