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General Education

If you’re taking any of AP Art courses, like 2-D or 3-D studio art, you absolutely have to understand the core principles of design. That’s because the elements and principles of design are a foundational element of great art!

In this article, we’re going to teach you everything you need to know about the seven principles of design, including:

• An overview of the principles of design
• An introduction to key concepts
• An in-depth look at each of the principles one-by-one
• Three top tips for incorporating these principles into your own work

Let’s get started!  

What Are the Principles of Design?

If you’ve ever played a sport, then you know that there are some fundamental rules that you have to follow if you want to be successful. For example, if you play soccer, then you know that one of the rules is that you have to kick the ball into the opposing team’s goal in order to score a point! While you don’t have to follow this rule—your team could just kick the ball to one another for 90 minutes—you’ll have a much better chance of winning if you do.

The principles of design are a lot like the rules of a sport. That’s because the principles of design are the rules and principles that artists and designers use to create visual compositions. Artists use these principles to make sure whatever they’re making accurately and effectively delivers their intended message to their audience.

2 Key Concepts: Visual Language and Design

In order to understand the principles of design, you first have to have a handle on two key concepts: visual language and design in general.

Visual language is the idea that we communicate through visual symbols. For example, take a look at the clothes you’re wearing. Do they have a logo on them, like the Nike “swoosh” or the Ralph Lauren “polo pony”? If they do, you’re participating in visual language!

Visual language is the way that designers and artists communicate messages and meaning through their work. They can use things like colors, lines, and shapes to make you feel or think a certain way. And since this is the ultimate goal of design, it’s important to understand how visual language works!

The second key concept is the definition of design itself. You probably hear the term thrown around a lot, whether it’s about the design of the newest Tesla car or the launch of a new designer clothing label.

But when it comes to principles of design, the term “design” has a very specific definition. In this case, design is the process of selecting and organizing elements or components in order to fulfill a specific purpose . This purpose may be functional, aesthetic, or both!  

So when we talk about design in this article, we’re specifically talking about how design elements are used to support the artist’s ultimate goal, whether that’s marketing a product, telling a story, or creating the next great artistic masterpiece.

What Are the Principles of Design Used For?

Artists use the principles of design to make sure that the work they’re creating...well, works. For instance, let’s say a graphic designer is supposed to create a poster for a presidential candidate. It’s going to be really important for the designer to use the principles of design during their design process to ensure the finished poster is visually communicating the right message to potential voters.

The same holds true for fine art, too. Artists paint, sculpt, and create in order to communicate with their viewers. Let’s say an artist is worried about how much Americans consume on a daily basis. That may become the subject of their work, and they’ll pay close attention to how their finished piece speaks to viewers about issues of capitalism. (A good example of how opinions on topics like consumerism and capitalism can be expressed through fine art is the painting “Landscape,” by American painter Mark Tansey .)

On the flip side, these principles are also used to determine whether a piece of art is a success or failure. When a visual composition uses the principles of design well, it will succeed in fulfilling its purpose (whatever that purpose might be). But just because a work is successful doesn’t mean you have to like it. That’s because liking or disliking a visual piece involves your personal taste.

The difference between the principles of design and taste is important. As an artist, it's important to separate your work from taste. This is true for many commercial artists, where their clients’ tastes might not reflect their own. Even fine artists need to be able to do this so that they aren’t conforming their art to others’ tastes.

For a critic, the separation helps them make better judgements. While there’s no real objective way to critique art, the principles of design provide a kind of rubric for assessing whether a piece of art functions.

It might make more sense to think of this in terms of baking. Let’s say you’re judging a cookie baking contest, and when you go to taste one cookie, it’s actually a small, round pizza. The baker argues that you should consider it a cookie: it’s small, flat, round, and baked in an oven. But just because the pizza lines up with the qualifications of a cookie in some ways, it’s missing some other important criteria: it’s not sweet, it’s not cake-like, and it’s certainly not dessert. At the end of the day, a pizza just isn’t a cookie.

The seven principles of design work the same way. Critics can use them as a measuring stick for art. If the goal of art is to communicate a message, then the fundamentals of design give critics a way of checking whether an art piece does so effectively. For critics, the seven principles of design also help ensure they aren’t labeling works as “bad” just because they don’t suit their personal tastes, too.

The 7 Principles of Design: Explained

Now that you’re familiar with the ideas behind the principles of design, let's take a closer look at each of the seven principles. How an artist uses these elements is important to the overall quality and effectiveness of their work.

One quick note: if you Google the principles of design, you’ll find lists that feature five, six, or even eleven principles! That’s because there’s not 100 percent consensus on what the fundamental principles of design are. So to create our list, we picked the principles that appeared the most often across the widest variety of sources.

Principle 1: Contrast

Just like in literature, visual contrast happens when different elements of a piece are noticeably different from one another. When contrasting elements are juxtaposed, or place next to one another, it draws the viewer’s attention.

One of the common ways artists do this is by using contrasting colors close to one another. (These are colors that appear on opposite sides of the color wheel from one another.) But this can also be done through the size or types of objects, too.

Take a look at Leonardo da Vinci’s work, Ginevra de’ Benci , pictured above. Notice the contrast of the woman’s skin against the dark background of the trees. Da Vinci uses contrast to draw your eye to what he considers to be the most important part of the piece—the woman’s face.

Principle 2: Emphasis

Emphasis is important for helping viewers see the most important part of a visual design. Oftentimes, we don’t notice emphasis when it’s done well...but it definitely stands out when it’s done poorly! For example, think about the billboards you see when you drive down the highway. The best ones put the most important information in big, bold letters, or use a related image to capture your attention. But when the type is too small or the images are too cluttered, the advertisement doesn’t work as well.

The movie poster for Jurassic Park is a great example of emphasis. It puts the most important information front-and-center: from a glance, you know that title and opening date of the movie. But the prominent outline of a skeleton also gives you a pretty good idea of what the movie is going to be about. (Spoiler alert: it’s about dinosaurs!)

It’s important to note that emphasis is closely linked to other principles of design. For example, the Jurassic Park poster uses contrast and space to create emphasis. Other posters, like this one for Gravity , use movement, space, and contrast to do the same thing.

Principle 3: Pattern

Pattern happens when an object, image, or symbol is uniformly repeated throughout a visual composition. Anything can be turned into a pattern, though some classic examples include intersecting lines, shapes, and spirals.

Patterns can do many things for a design. It can set the tone for the piece, like if the background features a 70s mod pattern or a repeating image, like an animal. A pattern can also set the stage for other design elements, like contrast or emphasis. In the image above, you can see how the star pattern combines with contrast to reveal a patriotic star, which becomes the emphasis of the advertisement.

Principle 4: Repetition

In design, repetition is used to unify and strengthen a design. Unlike a pattern, where one thing is repeated consistently throughout a design, repetition is the repeated use of certain elements, like color, shape, or font.

When repetition is used correctly, it creates consistency in a design . As a brand, Target Stores are famous for their use of repetition. They use color repetition to help viewers immediately associate an advertisement with their store. A good example of this is the advertisement above, which uses the repetition of colors and shapes (the concentric circles of the Target logo) to reiterate their brand.

Principle 5: Movement

It can seem strange to talk about movement when some visual compositions are still images. But movement as a principle of design is about the movement of a viewer’s eye across a work. Good art leads the viewer from one important element to the next. If a viewer’s eye tends to get stuck in one place, it’s a sign that some of the principles of design aren’t working quite right!

Using movement as a part of your design process has an added benefit: it helps viewers feel connected to what they’re seeing. Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh is an excellent example of movement in action.

In this painting, the swirls of color in the sky carry the viewer’s gaze from left to right, which makes you feel like you’re experiencing the night breeze. But on a mechanical level, Van Gogh’s brush strokes create movement, too. The sweeping lines on the mountains, for example, help[ bring your eye to the village, and following the vertical lines on the plant in the foreground return your gaze back to the sky.  

Principle 6: Space

In design, space refers to the area around different visual elements. There are two types of space: positive space and negative space.

Positive space is the area that the subject of the composition occupies. If you go back to da Vinci’s portrait above, you’ll see that the woman occupies a lot of the portrait’s positive space. As a designer, you use positive space to display the most important elements of your design.

On the other hand, negative space—which is sometimes called “white space”—is the space around objects! If you look back at the Jurassic Park poster, all of the black surrounding the central image and the other copy is a textbook example of negative space. Negative space can be tricky for designers since it seems empty, but it’s actually helping to create emphasis. It helps viewers quickly discern what’s important while also giving a design “room to breathe.”

Positive and negative space work together to create emphasis and visual appeal. Check out the piece above by graphic designer Jonathan Mak, which he made as a memorial to Steve Jobs after his death. He plays with the negative space of the Apple logo, turning the normal bite mark into the profile of the company’s late founder.

Principle 7: Balance

Now it’s time to talk about the last (but perhaps most important) principle of design: balance.

Every element in a visual composition carries weight. The more an element is emphasized, the heavier it is. A designer’s goal is to balance the weight of each object on the canvas in order to create a feeling of balance for the viewer.

There are two ways to do this: through symmetrical balance and through asymmetrical balance. Symmetrical balance adds objects to both sides of the center of a work to create symmetry. You can think of this as balancing a set of old-timey scales. You have to add the same amount of weight to each side to keep them level!

Asymmetrical balance happens when objects and elements aren’t spread evenly across the composition, but how they’re placed creates a sense of balance anyway. Oftentimes, asymmetrical balance helps create a sense of movement and draws your eye from one element to another.

In the photo above, you can see asymmetrical balance at work. The hand and donut are in the bottom of the image, and there’s no identical image at the top! The balance here comes from the amount of negative space in the photo. By limiting the emphasized image to a small part of the picture, the photo maintains its balance.

The 3 Best Tips for Using the Principles of Design

So how can you use the principles of design in your own work? Here are our three top tips for using principles of design to take your art to the next level.

Tip 1: Embrace Negative Space

Like we mentioned earlier, it’s tempting to fill up every corner of a composition with something. After all, we often think of space as “wasted,” right? But remember: negative space is incredibly important to helping the more important elements of a work shine.

A good way to do this is to follow the advice of Coco Chanel , the famous French fashion designer, who famously said: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” Take a step back and look at your composition. Is there something you can take off, shrink, or move that will help create more balance and space in your work?

Tip 2: Rethink the Axis of Symmetrical Balance

When it comes to symmetrical balance, we sometimes think about it like a Rorschach test where the balance of an image is either left/right or top/bottom. But in fact, the axis of balance for a visual composition can bisect the image at any angle.

Take a look at the picture above. The line of symmetry is on a diagonal from bottom right to top left. The image is still balanced, but the axis is tilted, which gives the image a lot more visual interest. It also comes across as more modern, too!

Tip 3: Take a Step Back

When you’re working on a composition, you’re normally pretty up close and personal with it. But that can sometimes skew your perspective of the piece as a whole.

That’s why one of the best ways to see if a composition works is to view it from a distance. (This is especially true if your composition is meant to be viewed from a distance, like with a large painting or advertisement.) Backing away from the screen or canvas will blur the elements together and help you get a better sense of whether the contrast, movement, and balance of a piece communicates your message.

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Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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The Principles of Design and Their Importance

Good design is possible without understanding the principles of design. But it may take a lot of trial and error to create something that both looks good and creates an optimal user experience. 🔊

By Cameron Chapman

Cameron comes from a design background and is the author of two web design books: Color for Web Design and The Smashing Idea Book.

Listen to the audio version of this article

One of the most difficult parts of talking about the principles of design is figuring out just how many principles there actually are (are there five ? Seven ? 10 ?). And once that’s been figured out, which of these supposed design fundamentals should be included?

Search for “principles of design” and Google will return results for articles that include from five to more than a dozen individual visual design principles. Even the articles that agree on the number don’t necessarily agree on which ones should be included in that number.

In reality, there are roughly a dozen basic principles of design that beginning and expert designers alike should keep in mind when working on their projects. In addition, there are another dozen or so “secondary” design principles that are sometimes included as basics (for example, the Gestalt Principles , typography , color , and framing). The main design principles are explained and illustrated below.

Basic Visual Design Principles

As already mentioned, there is no real consensus in the design community about what the main principles of design actually are. That said, the following twelve principles of visual design are those mentioned most often in articles and books on the subject.

One of the most common complaints designers have about client feedback often revolves around clients who say a design needs to “pop” more. While that sounds like a completely arbitrary term, what the client generally means is that the design needs more contrast.

Contrast refers to how different elements are in a design, particularly adjacent elements. These differences make various elements stand out. Contrast is also a very important aspect of creating accessible designs . Insufficient contrast can make text content in particular very difficult to read, especially for people with visual impairments.

All design elements and principles—typography, colors, images, shapes, patterns, etc.—carry a visual weight. Some elements are heavy and draw the eye, while other elements are lighter. The way these elements are laid out on a page should create a feeling of balance.

There are two basic types of balance: symmetrical and asymmetrical. Symmetrical designs layout elements of equal weight on either side of an imaginary center line. Asymmetrical balance uses elements of differing weights, often laid out in relation to a line that is not centered within the overall design.

Emphasis deals with the parts of a design that are meant to stand out. In most cases, this means the most important information the design is meant to convey.

Emphasis can also be used to reduce the impact of certain information. This is most apparent in instances where “fine print” is used for ancillary information in a design. Tiny typography tucked away at the bottom of a page carries much less weight than almost anything else in a design, and is therefore deemphasized.

Proportion is one of the easier principles of graphic design to understand. Simply put, it’s the size of elements in relation to one another. Proportion signals what’s important in a design and what isn’t. Larger elements are more important, smaller elements less.

Hierarchy is another principle of design that directly relates to how well content can be processed by people using a website. It refers to the importance of elements within a design. The most important elements (or content) should appear to be the most important.

Hierarchy is most easily illustrated through the use of titles and headings in a design. The title of a page should be given the most importance, and therefore should be immediately recognizable as the most important element on a page. Headings and subheadings should be formatted in a way that shows their importance in relation to each other as well as in relation to the title and body copy.

Repetition is a great way to reinforce an idea. It’s also a great way to unify a design that brings together a lot of different elements. Repetition can be done in a number of ways: via repeating the same colors, typefaces, shapes, or other elements of a design.

This article, for example, uses repetition in the format of the headings. Each design principle is formatted the same as the others in this section, signaling to readers that they’re all of equal importance and that they’re all related. Consistent headings unify these elements across the page.

The spaces between repeating elements can cause a sense of rhythm to form, similar to the way the space between notes in a musical composition create a rhythm. There are five basic types of visual rhythm that designers can create: random, regular, alternating, flowing, and progressive.

Random rhythms have no discernable pattern. Regular rhythms follow the same spacing between each element with no variation. Alternating rhythms follow a set pattern that repeats, but there is variation between the actual elements (such as a 1-2-3-1-2-3 pattern). Flowing rhythms follow bends and curves, similar to the way sand dunes undulate or waves flow. Progressive rhythms change as they go along, with each change adding to the previous iterations.

Rhythms can be used to create a number of feelings. They can create excitement (particularly flowing and progressive rhythms) or create reassurance and consistency. It all depends on the way they are implemented.

Patterns are nothing more than a repetition of multiple design elements working together. Wallpaper patterns are the most ubiquitous example of patterns that virtually everyone is familiar with.

In design, however, patterns can also refer to set standards for how certain elements are designed. For example, top navigation is a design pattern that the majority of internet users have interacted with.

White Space

White space—also referred to as “negative space”— is the areas of a design that do not include any design elements. The space is, effectively, empty.

Many beginning designers feel the need to pack every pixel with some type of “design” and overlook the value of white space. But white space serves many important purposes in a design, foremost being giving elements of the design room to breathe . Negative space can also help highlight specific content or specific parts of a design.

It can also make elements of a design easier to discern. This is why typography is more legible when upper and lowercase letters are used since negative space is more varied around lowercase letters, which allows people to interpret them more quickly.

In some cases, negative space is used to create secondary images that may not be immediately apparent to the viewer. This can be a valuable part of branding that can delight customers. Take the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo, for just one example.

Movement refers to the way the eye travels over a design. The most important element should lead to the next most important and so on. This is done through positioning (the eye naturally falls on certain areas of a design first), emphasis, and other design elements already mentioned.

Variety in design is used to create visual interest. Without variety, a design can very quickly become monotonous, causing the user to lose interest. Variety can be created in a variety of ways, through color, typography, images, shapes, and virtually any other design element.

However, variety for the sake of variety is pointless. Variety should reinforce the other elements of a design and be used alongside them to create a more interesting and aesthetically pleasing outcome that improves the user’s experience.

Everyone has seen a website or other design out there that seemed to just throw elements on a page with no regard for how they worked together. Newspaper ads that use ten different fonts come to mind almost immediately.

Unity refers to how well the elements of a design work together. Visual elements should have clear relationships with each other in a design. Unity also helps ensure concepts are being communicated in a clear, cohesive fashion. Designs with good unity also appear to be more organized and of higher quality and authority than designs with poor unity.

Other Principles of Design

Other principles of design are also touched upon in various articles on the subject. These include typography, color, Gestalt Principles, grid and alignment, framing, and shape. Some definitely fit the definition of “principles” while others are more like elements of design.

Typography refers to the way text is arranged in a design. That includes the fonts used, their spacing, size, and weight, and the way different text elements relate to each other. Good typographic design is heavily influenced by all of the other design principles mentioned earlier in this article.

The use of color in design is one of the most psychologically important parts of a design and has a huge influence on user experience. Color psychology and theory heavily influences some of the other principles mentioned earlier.

Gestalt Principles include similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, figure/ground, and symmetry & order (also called prägnanz). Some of those principles are closely related to the principles mentioned above.

Grid and alignment are closely related to balance and refer to the way elements are arranged in relation to an invisible grid on the page.

Framing refers to how the primary subject of a design is placed in relation to other elements on the page. It’s most often heard referred to in cinematography or photography, with how the main focus of an image is placed within the overall image. But the principle carries over into design.

Shape is also a major part of any design, both in terms of specific shapes used as elements within the design, and the overall shape of the design itself. Different shapes can evoke different feelings, i.e circles are organic and fluid, while squares are more rigid and formal, and triangles give a sense of energy or movement.

These design “principles” or elements are important aspects of good design and should be considered alongside the other basic principles to create the best user experiences.

What constitutes the “basic” principles of design is certainly up for debate. But understanding and implementing the principles covered above is vital to the success of any design project.

Designers should aim to understand how each of these design principles actually impact their work. Studying how other designers have implemented these ideas to structure their own designs is also an incredibly valuable tool in learning to create better designs.

It’s entirely possible to create a good design without a thorough understanding of these elements and principles of design. However, it’s typically done by “designer’s intuition” and may take a lot of trial and error in order to create something that actually looks good and creates an optimal user experience. Designers could save a lot of time and energy by practicing the principles we have discussed until they become second-nature.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• Design Principles: An Introduction to Visual Hierarchy
• Boost Your UX With These Successful Interaction Design Principles
• Exploring the Gestalt Principles of Design
• Persuasive Design: Using Advanced Psychology Effectively
• The Ultimate UX Hook : Anticipatory, Persuasive, and Emotional Design in UX

Understanding the basics

What are the elements of visual design.

The elements, or principles, of visual design include Contrast, Balance, Emphasis, Movement, White Space, Proportion, Hierarchy, Repetition, Rhythm, Pattern, Unity, and Variety. These principles of design work together to create something that is aesthetically pleasing and optimizes the user experience.

Why is contrast important in design?

Contrast refers to how different elements are in a design, making them more easily discernible from one another. Contrast is very important in creating accessible designs. Insufficient contrast can make text content in particular very difficult to read, especially for people with visual impairments.

What does rhythm mean in design?

The spaces between repeating visual elements create the basic design principle of rhythm to form, similar to the way the space between notes in a musical composition create a rhythm. There are five basic types of visual rhythm that designers can create: random, regular, alternating, flowing, and progressive.

What is the balance design principle?

Every element and principle of a design—typography, colors, images, shapes, patterns, etc.—carries a visual weight. Some elements are heavy and draw the eye, while other elements are lighter. The way that these elements are laid out on a page should create a feeling of balance.

How is emphasis achieved in design?

The basic design principle of emphasis is used to either make certain elements of a design stand out (such as through using contrasting colors, making an element larger, increasing the white space around it, etc.), or not stand out (like when including tiny “fine print” at the bottom of a page).

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The 12 Fundamental Principles of Design, Explained

Arrangement of visual imagery within the picture plane is essential for artists and designers to consider when creating their artwork. Effective use of design can help communicate powerful messages that leave an impact on viewers long after they have seen an individual image.

However, an unattractive design that has not been properly considered can confuse viewers, causing them to disengage from the artwork entirely.

What Makes Good Design?

While there are no hard and fixed rules as to what makes for a good design (after all, rules in art are made to be broken!), understanding the fundamentals of design is essential for anyone who wishes to engage in effective visual communication. You want your design to clearly communicate its message in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to your audience.

Regardless of whether you’re a highly trained creative professional or an amateur finding a new hobby, knowing and implementing good design skills will help you develop a compelling visual narrative.  

An Investment of Time Leads To Artistic Growth

Creative professionals will spend a lifetime honing their design skills in order to perfect their craft. Luckily, you don’t need to spend years going to art school to improve your design capabilities and grow as an artist. The first step towards developing your design skills is to be sure you have a solid understanding of the 12 fundamental principles of design.

These design basics will help to build your art vocabulary and provide a common language to examine these concepts on your own. Note that many of these design principles are interrelated, so developing your skill in one principle will build and strengthen your understanding of other principles.

Here are 12 fundamental principles of design, explained:

Principle of Design: Unity

A design achieves visual unity when there is a sense of harmony between the individual components of an artwork. All visual elements within the composition relate to one another in a manner that is both cohesive and aesthetically pleasing.

Unity enables the viewer to make sense of your design as a whole. You are striving to achieve unity within every design. Artworks with too many unrelated or competing elements will leave your viewers feeling confused and unresolved. 

Principle of Design: Variety

Variety in a design refers to the use of multiple visual elements within a single composition . Variety creates visual interest to capture your viewer’s attention and make your artwork more interesting.

Imagine a ballet performance where the dancers wear identical costumes and perform every movement in unison. The uniformity can quickly feel dull and constrained. However, introducing elements of variation––through light, color, shape, motion and the like––creates a far more compelling scene to captivate the audience.

Balancing Unity with Variety

Designs with too many contrasting elements can lead to a breakdown in the overall cohesion of the piece, muddling your message and confusing your viewers. Keep in mind that you are looking to develop the appropriate balance between unity and contrast in every new artwork.

Principle of Design: Hierarchy 

While all elements of design are important, artists and designers must establish a visual hierarchy within each individual artwork. A visual hierarchy essentially p rioritizes the visual content that will be featured most prominently in your design.

By establishing a visual hierarchy, you are determining which elements you will give more visual weight in order to help viewers process the information and amplify the impact of your design’s message. 

Visual hierarchy is communicated through a number of design elements including size, color, and spatial composition. Establishing visual hierarchy is also achieved by drawing upon design principles such as contrast and emphasis.  Visual hierarchy creates organization and allows viewers to navigate through your design.

Failing to establish a clear visual hierarchy can confuse viewers as it leaves them without a clear visual guide. 

Principle of Design: Contrast

Visual contrast refers to the perceivable level of difference between the main elements within your design. Any number of visual elements can be contrasted within a design including color, shape, pattern, and use of space.

Contrast is used to command visual interest and direct the viewer’s attention. By signaling the compositional element where viewers should focus, you are guiding your viewers towards the most important focal points of the piece.

Contrast is a great tool to organize the visual hierarchy of your design.Visual elements with a high degree of contrast quickly stand out to the eye. For example, placing white text against a black background creates strong visual contrast due to the stark tonal difference between light and dark. This gives the illusion that the text is popping out from the overall background of the design.

By comparison, placing white text against a light grey background generates a lesser degree of visual contrast, causing the two elements to appear more closely blended together in the pictorial space. 

Principle of Design: Emphasis

Emphasis allows for specific parts within the image to stand out from the overall design. Artists use emphasis to direct the viewer’s attention to a desired focal point or multiple points of focus.

Emphasis can be created by manipulating any number of visual elements within the design. For example, color, shape, rhythm, and movement are all visual elements that can all be used to create emphasis. 

Using Contrast to Create Emphasis

Contrast also plays a crucial role in creating emphasis; a high level of contrast signals a greater degree of difference between the elements in your design. Highlighting this difference can further emphasize your artwork’s focal point.

Imagine you are depicting a city scene and wish to place emphasis on the height of a specific skyscraper. If your skyscraper is surrounded by other buildings of similar size and proportion, it is not distinguished from the other elements in the composition. If, however, your skyscraper is surrounded by single-story ranch-style homes, the contrast of shape and size will place emphasis on the skyscraper.

Principle of Design: White/Negative Space

Negative space, also known as white space, refers to the unmarked space that exists between and around the main compositional elements of your artwork . For designers who work with text, negative space includes the spaces between words, the spaces between lines of text, and the spaces in the margins. Note that while negative space may be referred to as white space, the space itself can be of any color. 

The principle of negative space can sometimes be difficult to grasp as it refers to the absence rather than presence of an object. An easy way to visualize negative space is to imagine painting a palm tree onto a blank white canvas. In this instance, the negative spaces are the shapes created by the white of the canvas, the spaces surrounding the central palm tree composition.

Why Consider Negative Space

While easy to overlook, negative space is an important design principle that provides organization and clarity to your work. When a design lacks sufficient negative space compositional elements may feel cramped or distracting, obscuring your message.

Principle of Design: Balance

Balance is the even distribution of visual weight within the pictorial space . Utilizing the principle of balance ensures that visual elements are not haphazardly thrown together into a composition. Balance provides viewers with a sense of harmony and is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Color, placement of compositional elements, and symmetry can be all used to achieve balance. 

Symmetry, Asymmetry, and the Rule of Thirds

Symmetrical balance occurs when an image has identical visual balance around both sides of a central axis.

An easy exercise to understand symmetry is to take a sheet of paper and fold it vertically into two equal halves. Now take a pair of scissors and cut any shape around the perimeter of the paper (excluding the folded side). When you open the sheet of paper, your design will be symmetrically balanced, with each side a perfect mirror image of the other. Note that while balance is essential for an effective design, symmetry is not necessary to achieve balance.

Asymmetrical balance occurs when you have unequal or dissimilar visual elements on both sides of a central axis. However, even asymmetrical compositions can achieve visual balance. One simple way to help balance your composition is to apply the rule of thirds in your design.

The rule of thirds places an imaginary grid over your image, dividing the composition into three equal rows with three equal columns. Notice the points where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect. These intersections naturally serve as focal points within your composition and can serve to guide you in balancing an asymmetrical design. 

Principle of Design: Proportion 

Proportion is the comparative relationship between visual element s, particularly as they relate to each other in terms of size, shape, and scale . Visual elements that are in proper proportion generate a sense of harmony and balance in your composition.

Well-proportioned designs often are not consciously noticed by your viewers. However, improper use of proportion will immediately stand out as visual elements will appear distorted or out of place. 

Principle of Design: Movement

Visual movement refers to the path taken as the viewer moves their eyes around the composition of your artwork. This path may direct viewers towards a single focal point, or the viewer may bounce between multiple focal points.

Use of rhythm, line, color, balance, and pattern are a few examples of visual elements that can aid the development of movement within your design. Movement implies action and provides energy and dynamism; designs which lack sufficient movement can appear dull to your viewer. 

Principle of Design: Rhythm 

Rhythm is created when a series of visual elements are repeated within a single design. Similar to the rhythm of a musical composition, visual rhythm helps establish the tone and mood of an artwork and creates a feeling of organized movement.

Any visual element can be repeated to create rhythm, and you can repeat more than one element within a single design. Repeating visual elements at regular intervals creates a consistent rhythm, whereas variations in intervals will generate a more unpredictable rhythm.

Rhythm vs. Movement

The design principles of rhythm and movement are closely related and easily confused. The principle of movement refers to the overall sense of motion found within an artwork. Rhythm describes a single motion or series of motions that is repeated throughout the artwork. In other words, the visual rhythm found within a design sets the tone and tenor for the design’s overall pattern of movement. 

Principle of Design: Repetition 

Repetition occurs when an element or elements of your design appears more than once within the composition. Any visual component may be repeated throughout the pictorial plane such as color scheme, shape, or motif.

Repetition provides rhythm to your design and helps maintain overall visual unity. You may also repeat elements of your design in any arrangement.

Principle of Design: Pattern

A pattern is made up of multiple visual components which is then repeated throughout the design in a consistent arrangement. Most of us are familiar with common patterns found on items of clothing such as stripes, plaid, polka dots, and argyle. Patterns are a form of repetition that are attractive to the eye and aid in providing visual harmony and overall design unity.

Taking The Next Step

Now that you have learned to understand these important art terms , you should practice incorporating them into your own creative work. Take a moment to conduct a quick self assessment in order to examine your own work and assess how you are (or aren’t) utilizing these 12 design principles.

• Does your work form a visual hierarchy?
• Are there design elements that you favor?
• Others you have not previously considered?

You will return to the principles of visual design time and time again as you continue to progress.

Practice and self improvement will aid you enormously in your ongoing creative development. 

Additionally, connecting with a professional art tutor and taking personalized lessons can provide further training to accelerate your progress. Many professional designers and working artists are also trained educators, and by working one-on-one with an art tutor, you receive individualized attention that builds upon your current strengths, targets your specific needs, and meets your unique creative goals.

Connect with an art tutor today

Samantha Fein is a passionate educator with over 10 years of experience in tutoring and classroom teaching. She holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College, Maryland Institute College of Art, and is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the Philippines. Her specialities include Art, English, Spanish as well as essay editing and guiding students through the college admissions process. Request Tutoring From Samantha

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Design Principles and Practices

Design principles and practices are essential tools that help designers create visually appealing, functional, and effective solutions. Whether it’s creating a website, logo, product design , or user interface, these guidelines allow for the best possible outcome for the goal.

At the core of each project is understanding the basics of design principles. The most common principles include balance, composition, contrast, and hierarchy. Balance ensures elements within a design have both visual and physical equilibrium by anchoring items around an axis point. Composition is how all the parts within a design are joined together to communicate a message and produce harmony between elements.

The contrast gives emphasis to certain components by highlighting them against other elements in different shades of color, sizes, and textures. Hierarchy arranges items into order based on importance or function; typically putting primary components on top with secondary beneath. These can be further broken down into areas like scale, texture, and flow which assist in achieving visual interest in a design project.

Practices encompass the actions that can be taken while using these principles to create an end result. This could range from applying typography rules; such as font selection or line heights; to understanding how layout placement impacts readability as well as accessibility considerations for both print and digital media. Additionally, there are techniques for creating engaging copy that will draw readers in as well as grids for helping establish page structure + balance on a page or document When all put together it helps designers organize their ideas + present them logically so they can reach their intended audience effectively.

Design principles + practices provide both novice + seasoned professionals with the necessary foundations for creating effective designs whatever purpose they may serve; whether for user experience ( UX ) or presentation projects or simple branding pieces each one is unique to its user’s needs allowing them to make changes along way to achieve desired outcomes efficiently without compromising quality. Understanding this has become even more important due to recent advances in technology such as AR/ VR experiences also allows designers to think outside box when it comes to considering potential solutions It’s part of what makes this field so interesting — no two designs ever have the same outcome!

With the vast number of options available, it can be difficult to decide what’s best for your project. That’s why having a solid design team with members who understand principles and practices is essential in order to create the most successful outcome. They should also have a clear understanding of user requirements and expectations as well as knowledge of semantic HTML coding practices which will help ensure content is accessible to all users regardless of their device or capabilities.

Designers should also consider other factors when working on a project such as legal implications and copyright/trademark considerations to prevent infringements or missteps that could occur from reusing images and texts without permission which could lead to costly fines or lawsuits. Additionally, aesthetics shouldn’t be overlooked either; good design not only looks great but should be user-friendly too so users don’t feel overwhelmed when trying to use an interface or product.

Overall, following design principles and practices allows designers to create visually appealing products that are functional and meet user needs while also remaining competitive in today’s marketplace. While some components may need adjustment over time due to technological advances, trends, or feedback from users, having an understanding of the basics will help ensure projects stay up-to-date and relevant.

Here’s a list of jobs that could benefit from Design Principles and Practices

• Web Design: Web design utilizes design principles such as color theory, typography, grid systems, and layout structures to create an aesthetically pleasing and effective user experience.
• Graphic Design: Graphic Designers use design techniques to create visuals for print (magazines, posters, etc.), packaging, advertisement materials (print ads and television commercials), logos, and branding.
• User Experience (UX) Design: UX designers create digital experiences that meet the needs of users while also considering how they interact with the product or service being provided.
• Product Design: Product designers are responsible for creating objects such as furniture, appliances, electronic devices, and consumer goods that are both functional and aesthetically appealing.
• Industrial Design: This type of designer focuses on designing products used in industrial settings such as factory equipment or machinery. They must consider concerns such as production costs, ergonomics, safety, and maintenance when creating a product design.
• Interior Design: Interior designers focus on enhancing the look and feel of a space by rearranging furniture, choosing paint colors or wallpapers, selecting window treatments, and other decorative touches to make an area more inviting and comfortable for its occupants.
• Fashion Design: Fashion designers take inspiration from trends in popular culture to create fashionable clothing items or accessories that can be mass-produced or sustainably manufactured at scale for global distribution.
• Architecture: Architects create both interiors and exteriors that are functional, safe, and aesthetically pleasing. They must consider the client’s needs, construction costs, building regulations, local climate, and more when designing a structure.
• Motion Design: Motion designers use design principles to create animated graphics for television commercials, movie openings, video game intros, or other digital mediums.
• Exhibition Design: Exhibition designers create visual displays for museums, galleries, or other venues to make the artwork more engaging and interesting for visitors. These designs often rely on color theory, visual storytelling, and soundscapes to convey a message or evoke an emotion in viewers.

In conclusion, there is a wide variety of design roles and disciplines that all utilize various principles and practices to create aesthetically pleasing and practical objects, products, and digital experiences. Designers must take into account many factors such as the client’s needs, production costs, safety regulations, and more when crafting their designs.

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Hands-on and Minds-curious Art Learning

Finish the year of with ease and connection with the End of the Year Survival Pack from Art Class Curator!

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The Ultimate Collection of Principles of Design Examples and Definitions

Inside:  The ultimate collection of principles of design examples and definitions, plus helpful resources for teaching the elements and principles of art.

What are the Elements and Principles of Art?

The elements of art and principles of design are the fundamental pieces that make up an artwork. Most works of art will make use of many or all of the elements and principles of art. We often judge art by how effectively the artist used these design fundamentals even before we learn about them.

The elements of art are the building blocks of an artwork: color, line, shape, form, value, texture, and space . They are the tools artists use when creating an artwork. See  Elements of Art Examples and Definitions for more on the elements of art.

The principles of design are how those building blocks are arranged: contrast, rhythm, proportion,  balance, unity, emphasis, movement, and variety . They are the ways an artist can organize the elements of art to create a wide range of effects.

Each of these art fundamentals are closely related and many of them overlap. When combined, they produce a complete artistic vision.

Why are the Elements and Principles of Art Important?

Knowing the elements and principles of art boosts visual literacy. Artists and creators make more powerful works when they utilize the principles of art. When viewers are familiar with the elements of art, they become more aware of the details and can better appreciate what they see and the message behind it. Connecting with art makes us more empathetic and strengthens the fabric of society . In the age of the internet, understanding how and why advertisers make design decisions can empower students with information and make them less susceptible to manipulation.

Teaching the Elements of Art and Principles of Design

I once said that I hate the elements and principles of art , but that’s not quite accurate. The elements and principles of art are a lens through which to view and understand art, but they are not what makes  art education  vital. Art inspires higher level thinking, focus, a growth mindset, visual literacy, curiosity, respect, and connection. The elements and principles of design are an artist’s toolbox. Knowing the tools not only improves students’ studio art skills and gives them deeper appreciation when viewing artworks, it helps make them better, more informed citizens and prepares them for a visually complex and culturally interconnected modern world in need of creative problem solvers.

Below you’ll find an explanation of each of the principles of design, including artwork examples and links to helpful materials for teaching the individual concepts.

Please note, this post includes Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Download the Free Elements and Principles Printable Pack

This pack of printables was designed to work in a variety of ways in your classroom when teaching the elements and principles of art. You can print and hang in your classroom as posters/anchor charts or you can cut each element and principle of art in its own individual card to use as a lesson manipulative.

Principles of Design Examples and Definitions

Scroll below for each element or click the link to be taken to the appropriate principle of design:

As a principle of art, contrast refers to the arrangement of opposite elements and effects. For example, light and dark colors, smooth and rough textures, large and small shapes. Contrast can be used to create variety, visual interest, and drama in an artwork.

In this example of contrast in art, Caravaggio created a scene of action and energy by contrasting both light/dark and directional lines.

Käthe Kollwitz adds contrast using the elements of art line, value, and shape, but she also adds contrast of emotion showing the despair of the mother in dark values and lighter sweeter elements like the heart on the chair in the background.

Contrast in Art Resources

• The Paper Mill Store: Design Principles, Contrast
• Jon Lovett: Contrast, Principles of Design
• Edvard Munch Art Lesson with Project
• Judith and Holofernes Paintings: A Compare and Contrast Art Lesson

Rhythm is a principle of design that suggests movement or action. Rhythm is usually achieved through repetition of lines, shapes, colors, and more. It creates a visual tempo in artworks and provides a path for the viewer’s eye to follow.

In this rhythm example, the artist uses pattern, repetition of line, and contrast between curved and straight lines to create rhythm in art.

In this example of of rhythm in art, Mondrian repeats shape, color, and line to bounce the viewer’s eye around the artwork.

In this fun rhythm in art examples video, the differences between pattern, repetition, and rhythm are described and put to music.

Rhythm in Art Resources

• Art Soup Video: Principles of Design: Rhythm
• Horse in Motion & The First Moving Pictures
• Early Photography Inspired Flipbook Project

Proportion is the size relationship between the various parts of an artwork. Artists can use the scale and proportion to create sensations such as depth, realism, disorientation, and drama.

The human figure is scaled to appear larger than the city skyline. The proportions could indicate depth of perspective or could symbolize the relationship of laborers in building a city.

In this example of proportion in art, the artist manipulates the individual proportions of the child as well as create varying size relationship (scale) between the objects in the painting and the child to create meaning in the artwork.

In this proportion in art example, the artist make the hands out of proportion with the rest of their bodies to enhance the meaning of the artwork. These men work with their hands, and their hands are exaggerated to show how important their hands and work are to all the people of France.

Looking for more examples of proportion in art ? Check out The Ultimate List of Proportion and Scale in Art Examples post!

Scale in art describes the size of one object in relation to another and also refers to our perception of perspective and proportion. Artworks that look realistic are scaled similarly to real world objects. Scale in art can also refer to the overall size of the work.

In this scale in art example, the artist uses scale to show the space or depth between the girl and the house in the background.

In this example of scale in art, Magritte plays with scale to create an amusing composition.

Hierarchical Scale

Hierarchical scale is a technique used in art, most often in sculpture and painting, in which the artist depicts objects with an unnatural scale to show their importance or lack thereof. This size manipulation draws the viewer’s eye where the artist wants attention.

Ancient Egyptian artists are well-known for their use of hierarchical scale. In this example of hierarchical scale in art, the artist shows the man as largest (most important) and the child smallest (least important). The figures are in proportion within the figure but out of proportion with the other figures in the picture.

For more examples of scale in art, check out our proportion and scale in art blog post!

Proportion in Art Resources

• The Ultimate Collection of Proportion in Art
• How Artists Depict Space
• Art Around the World in 30 Days – Day #24 – Columbia’s Fernando Botero
• Sophia.org: Design in Art: Scale and Proportion

As a principle of art, balance refers to the distribution of weight in a composition. While actual weight is a factor in sculpture and architecture, the principle of balance most often refers to the visual heaviness of shapes and forms in an artwork. An artwork’s balance affects the equality and tension of the composition and can lend a feeling of calm or chaos to the work.

Symmetrical Balance

An artwork with symmetrical balance is well-balanced and looks even and stable. When one side of an artwork mirrors the other, it has absolute symmetry. When the symmetrical balance is not exact, it is called bilateral symmetry.

In this example of symmetrical balance in art, each animal on the left has its equal counterpart on the right. The colors are not exact, but it is still considered symmetrical balance.

Asymmetrical Balance

An artwork with asymmetrical balance is “heavier” or “lighter” in some areas, looks unstable, and can make the viewer uncomfortable. Asymmetric balance adds a dynamic look to artworks and often draws attention to focal points in the composition.

In this example of asymmetrical balance in art, the artist balances the heavy black figure on the right with the curtain on the left. If the curtain were a different size or a different color, the balance would be thrown off.

Radial Balance

An artwork with radial balance is arranged around a central component. Forms and objects in a radially balanced composition appear to radiate out of the circular focal point of the artwork.

With radial balance, like in the example of radial balance below, one can imagine the artwork as equal pieces of a pie.

Looking for more examples of balance in art? Check out The Best Examples of Balance in Art post!

Balance in Art Resources

• The Ultimate Collection of Balance in Art
• Smashing Magazine: Design Principles: Compositional, Symmetrical, and Asymmetrical Balance
• Lifewire: Balance: The Basic Principles of Design

Unity, also known as harmony, is a design principle that refers to the cohesiveness of an artwork—how whole, consistent, and complete it appears. Unity in art is not necessarily just a repetition of the same element over and over again, but it is the pleasing combination of elements to create a harmonious composition.

In this example of unity in art, Botero creates unity through subject matter, through rhythm, and through repetition of form, shape, and color.

In unity blog post, you will find more examples of unity in art created with shape/form, color, texture, line, style, and in architecture.

Unity in Art Resources

• Examples of Unity in Art
• Natomas High School Design Department
• Virtual Art Instructor: Teach harmony and unity with a game

As a principle of art, emphasis refers to the area of an artwork that dominates attention or draws interest. It is often the place a viewer looks first. Artists create emphasis by contrasting the elements of art, such as color or shape.

In this example of emphasis in art, Goya highlights the man in white through putting him in a spotlight, having the man wear bright clothes, having many lines throughout the composition pointing to the man, and having his emotional face be one of the only faces shown.

Looking for more examples of emphasis in art? Check out The Best Examples of Emphasis in Art post!

Emphasis in Art Resources

• The Ultimate Collection of Emphasis in Art
• Sophia.org: Design in Art: Emphasis, Variety, and Unity

Movement can be thought of in two ways – the first refers to how an artist depicts movement using the elements and principles of art. The second way refers to the visual flow of an artwork, indicated by the path a viewer’s eyes take as they look at the artwork.

Lines, edges, shapes, and colors can be utilized by the artist to point the way through an artwork as a map for our eyes to follow.

In this example of movement in art, the artist shows the movement of the wind through the shapes of the paper. The lines of the figures and the lines of the billowing clothing convey movement in art as well.

Movement in Art Resources

• Art, Design, and Visual Thinking: Movement
• Art About Love: Oskar Kokoschka’s The Bride of the Wind
• Fate of the Animals by Franz Marc

Variety refers to the elements of a composition that differ from one another. Variety creates visual interest and energy.

A lot of variety can make an artwork look busy or overwhelming. When paired with unity, variety offers the viewer points of interest.

In this example of variety in art, Kandinsky uses a variety of lines, shapes, values, and colors.

Variety in Art Resources

• The Virtual Instructor: Variety, Harmony, and Unity

The principles of design examples can be a powerful way to engage and interpret a work of art. To help your students engage, don’t forget to download these free art worksheets:

Free Worksheets

8 Free Art Appreciation Worksheets

Includes the elements & principles.

Download 8 Free Art Appreciation Worksheets – including 2 Elements and Principles pages! Activities designed to work with almost any work of art. Help your students connect with art while having fun!

More Principles of Design Examples

For more examples of elements and principles of art, check out more from our elements of art examples series below.

You May Also Enjoy These Posts:

Reader Interactions

17 comments.

April 20, 2020 at 1:29 pm

HeyCindy, I like the description of the subject with the help of real art pieces. I was unable to understand some concepts. But with your detailed explanation they all got cleared and THANK YOU for Free posters. They would be great help for my students.

April 23, 2020 at 9:23 am

I was unable to understand some concepts. But with your detailed explanation they all got cleared and THANK YOU for Free posters.

September 5, 2021 at 12:10 pm

Thank you so much for this wonderful teaching moreover displaying lots of knowledge here I am very grateful 😍😍hope to see more like this in upcoming days keep going 🙏🙏

May 29, 2020 at 3:24 pm

thanks a lot, I was sad to trying a lot to understand that principle and now it’s clear for me, you make my day!

November 12, 2020 at 7:23 am

Very helpful 🙂

January 27, 2021 at 8:57 am

im just thankful to this reference because it will help me to answer my module. Godbless..

February 2, 2021 at 5:23 am

You’re welcome!

January 30, 2021 at 6:15 pm

I cant seem to download the resource packs

February 2, 2021 at 5:28 am

I sent you an email. Please check you inbox! If you don’t see it, please email [email protected] and we will send again. Thanks!

March 21, 2021 at 11:32 pm

I can’t seem to download the resources pack either.

March 23, 2021 at 11:48 am

Thanks for reaching out! I emailed you the EP Pack, let me know if you didn’t receive it.

May 9, 2021 at 10:15 am

Hey I am a Arts instructor an for unbalanced I use this reference ALL THE TIME! As far as unbalanced artworks I struggled with that one too I found that Minimalists are much more likely to do this for example Rothko and Mondrian I just thought I’d reach out and let you know about that

May 11, 2021 at 9:57 am

Thank you for the suggestions! You can see our other examples of unbalanced artworks here, https://artclasscurator.com/artworks-that-show-balance/ .

June 10, 2021 at 11:10 pm

June 15, 2021 at 7:08 am

Check you email! I sent the pack.

August 11, 2021 at 7:13 pm

Hi I can’t find the link to download the printable pack!

August 16, 2021 at 11:17 pm

This link will take you to the elements & principles printable pack, https://artclasscurator.com/acc_optin/elements-principles-pack/ . Email [email protected] if you have any problems with the download.

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Free Worksheets!

*Free Bundle of Art Appreciation Worksheets*

In this free bundle of art worksheets, you receive six ready-to-use art worksheets with looking activities designed to work with almost any work of art.

The 7 Principles of Art and Design

• Art History
• Architecture

• MLA, Harvard Graduate School of Design

The elements and principles of art and design are the foundation of the language we use to talk about art. The elements of art are the visual tools that the artist uses to create a composition. These are line, shape, color, value, form, texture, and space.

The principles of art represent how the artist uses the elements of art to create an effect and to help convey the artist's intent. The principles of art and design are balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, pattern, rhythm, and unity/variety. The use of these principles can help determine whether a painting is successful, and   whether or not the painting is finished .

The artist decides what principles of art he or she wants to use in a painting. While an artist might not use all the principles of design in one piece, the principles are intertwined and the use of one will often depend on another. For example, when creating emphasis, the artist might also be using contrast or vice versa. It is generally agreed that a successful painting is unified , while also having some variety created by areas of contrast and  emphasis ; is visually balanced ; and moves  the viewer's eye around the composition. Thus it is that one principle of art can influence the effect and impact of another. 

The 7 principles of art

Balance refers to the visual weight of the elements of the composition . It is a sense that the painting feels stable and "feels right." Imbalance causes a feeling of discomfort in the viewer.

Balance can be achieved in 3 different ways: 

• Symmetry , in which both sides of a composition have the same elements in the same position, as in a mirror-image, or the two sides of a face.
• Asymmetry , in which the composition is balanced due to the contrast of any of the elements of art. For example, a large circle on one side of a composition might be balanced by a small square on the other side
• Radial symmetry, in which elements are equally spaced around a central point, as in the spokes coming out of the hub of a bicycle tire.

See the article, Balance , for some visual examples of how the elements of art can be used to achieve balance.

Contrast is the difference between elements of art in a composition, such that each element is made stronger in relation to the other. When placed next to each other, contrasting elements command the viewer's attention. Areas of contrast are among the first places that a viewer's eye is drawn. Contrast can be achieved by juxtapositions of any of the elements of art. Negative/Positive space is an example of contrast. Complementary colors placed side by side is an example of contrast. Notan is an example of contrast. 

Emphasis   is when the artist creates an area of the composition that is visually dominant and commands the viewer's attention. This is often achieved by contrast.

Movement is the result of using the elements of art such that they move the viewer's eye around and within the image. A sense of movement can be created by diagonal or curvy lines, either real or implied, by edges, by the illusion of space, by repetition, by energetic mark-making. 

Pattern is the uniform repetition of any of the elements of art or any combination thereof. Anything can be turned into a pattern through repetition. Some classic patterns are spirals, grids, weaves. For examples of different pattern types see the Artlandia Glossary of Pattern Design . A popular drawing practice is Zentangles ,  in which an abstract or representational outline is divided into different areas, each of which contains a unique pattern.

Rhythm  is created by movement implied through the repetition of elements of art in a non-uniform but organized way. It is related to rhythm in music. Unlike pattern, which demands consistency, rhythm relies on variety.

Unity /Variety  You want your painting to feel unified such that all the elements fit together comfortably. Too much unity creates monotony, too much variety creates chaos.You need both. Ideally, you want areas of interest in your composition along with places for your eye to rest. 

• The 8 Elements of Composition in Art
• What Is Meant by "Emphasis" in Art?
• What Is Balance in Art and Why Does It Matter?
• What is the Definition of Contrast in Art?
• Finding Rhythm in the Visual Arts
• How Are Patterns Used in Art?
• The Element of Space in Artistic Media
• Creating a Map Legend
• The Definition of 'Form' in Art
• Understanding Proportion in Art
• The 7 Elements of Art and Why Knowing Them Is Important
• The Definition of Shape in Art
• Rhythm as a Basic Principle of Design for Websites
• What Is Tone in Art?
• Ways of Defining Art

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Crafting product-specific design principles to support better decision making.

August 2, 2020 2020-08-02

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Making decisions is what designers do regularly when designing products and services. Some of these decisions are straightforward (e.g., where to place the Log in button), but others require choosing between two competing goals. For example, should we go for a clean, minimalistic design or make content super discoverable ? Which user group should we prioritize for this task: power users or casual users ?

When faced with tradeoffs like these, designers need to choose which goal to sacrifice in favor of another. Doing so can be tricky: the choice made can feel subjective or random and can result in lengthy — and possibly unneeded — debates within large design teams.

In This Article:

Product design principles, step 1: identify core values, step 2: consider how these values impact users, step 3: identify any common tradeoffs, step 4: write, compare, and iterate.

One useful device to guide designers to make the right tradeoff decisions are product-specific design principles. These principles support consistency in the way decisions are being made across teams, build confidence in the decision, and eliminate fruitless debates.

Product design principles (or, in short, design principles) are value statements that describe the most important goals that a product or service should deliver for users and are used to frame design decisions.

It’s worth stating that product design principles are different from principles of good design, such as usability guidelines , heuristics , or visual-design principles . Design principles are specific to the product or service that is being designed. That being said, they are not directions on how to design specific UI elements (like design patterns or standards). Often, product design principles are referred to as ‘design principles,’ and usually, the context is enough to understand whether the term refers to general UI principles or to product-specific design principles. In this article, we use “design principles” and “product design principles” interchangeably.

To illustrate how design principles work, let’s have a look at an example. Here’s a design principle for Nielsen Norman Group’s website.

Clarity Over Popularity We’re not an academic journal, nor a trendsetter. Our goal is to be a source of clarity and instruction, and to provide actionable advice for UX professionals that’s backed by research. Practitioners today come from many different backgrounds and UX isn’t easy; it’s nuanced and complex. Let’s give users advice that’s clear, easy-to-digest, and concrete without introducing unnecessary jargon or confusing terminology. By doing so, we can empower designers to succeed in their jobs and make the world a better, more user-friendly place.

In order for design principles to be effective, they should:

• Take a stand on which value is important: Each principle should be clear on what value it advocates and why. If the principle is ambiguous about what it recommends, then it could be interpreted differently. It can be helpful if a value is explicitly called out over another regularly conflicting value to make the desired choice more obvious.
• Inspire empathy: A design principle should mention why that value is important to users. By doing so it helps designers keep users at the heart of their design decisions.
• Be concise: Design principles are not meant to be an essay. Keep it short and to the point, to ensure they’re easily understood, referenced, and remembered.
• Be memorable: If you have content specialists in your organization, it’s worth getting their input in drafting principles to make them memorable (as well as concise). Additionally, you shouldn’t have too many. For example, having 10 or more leads to many being forgotten; reading and understanding them again each time they are needed consumes too much time.
• Not conflict with one another: Each principle should be dedicated to one value only. However, be careful that your principles don’t conflict. For example, if there was a principle about consistency and another one about adaptability, then it would be difficult to understand how these values should be prioritized against one another when faced with a design decision that requires sacrificing one for the other. If both are important, but in different contexts, then clearly specify in which contexts one of these principles is more important than the other.

Writing effective design principles is harder than it sounds. However, there are plenty of good — and not so good — examples out there that can be used to draw inspiration from. (It might also be interesting to check your competitors’ design principles!) If you’re thinking of writing some design principles for the first time, here are some simple steps which you can perform alone or in a workshop with your team and stakeholders.

Before writing your design principles, you need to identify the values essential for the success of your product or service. These important values may have been captured in vision statements or project briefs. If these don’t exist, then do some research; find out what differentiates your product or service from your competitors’. Why do people choose to use your product or service, and not a competitor’s? These values might be those to emphasize in your design principles. If you have many, then prioritize the ones that are most important overall for the success of the product or service.

To ensure you write design principles that are user-centered, ask yourself: why are these values important? What do they help to achieve for users? If we didn’t pursue them, how would our users be affected? Write these out.

Are there any well-known, simple conflicts in your organization that should be settled? If so, call them out. For example, you might have a frequent conflict between the needs of sellers and the needs of buyers on an ecommerce platform. If their needs conflict, which user group should be prioritized?

Having many people write a version of a design principle for each value can help to generate many good ideas. Voting can reveal a favorite, or all versions could be blended to produce a principle that everyone has had a hand in creating.

It’s a good idea to involve others in the creation of design principles, as they will be more likely to be accepted and adhered to. It is also a great way to set focus before building a new product or service or when onboarding new designers.

After producing design principles, ensure they’re not forgotten. Publish them in blogs or with your design system, regularly discuss your design principles in meetings, include them in presentation decks, or print them and stick them up on walls so designers know about them and can easily reference them. Most important, use the principles to explain and justify design decisions: when you make a trade-off decision, don’t just say, “we’re doing it this way because I say so” (or, “because it’s best” which is just a nicer way of saying the same). Say that we’re doing it because principle #3 tips the balance in favor of one of the options.

Design principles help to keep important values front and center in the design process. When successfully composed and used, design principles ensure consistency in decision making across designers and teams, removing the need to debate simple tradeoffs and letting designers worry about complex problems.

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The Principles of Design

Unity and Variety

Unity can be defined as the similarity, oneness, togetherness, or cohesion of the elements within a composition. Variety is unity’s opposite—the difference between elements. Unity and Variety are the cornerstones of composition, and when combined, can create compositions that are both cohesive and lively. Unity and variety can be explored through techniques like:

• Containment

Balance refers to the distribution of weight or force within a composition.

• Actual balance
• Pictorial balance
• Symmetrical balance
• Asymmetrical balance
• Horizontal, vertical, diagonal and radial balance

Emphasis and Focal Point

Emphasis gives prominence to part of a design. A focal point is a compositional device used to create emphasis. Both emphasis and focal point are used to attract attention and increase visual and conceptual impact.

• Emphasis by isolation
• Emphasis by placement
• Emphasis through contrast

Rhythm is difficult to summarize in words. Assuming that you've picked up on a rhythm in music before, take what you heard with your ears and try to translate that to something you'd see with your eyes. Rhythm, in art, is a visual beat. A pattern has rhythm, but not all rhythm is patterned. For example, the colors of a piece can convey rhythm, by making your eyes travel from one component to another. Lines can produce rhythm by implying movement. Forms, too, can cause rhythm by the ways in which they're placed one next to the other.

Scale refers to the size of a form when compared with our own human size.

• Hierarchical scale
• Distortion of scale

Proportion describes the size, location or amount of one element to another or to the whole in a work of art.

Reed Enger, "The Principles of Design," in Obelisk Art History , Published August 06, 2019; last modified November 22, 2022, http://www.arthistoryproject.com/essays/the-elements-of-design/.

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Design Principles in Oldest Art Essay

Principles of design.

Principles of design are instinctive elements that guide artists in making decisions on the look and nature of any piece of art. The first part of the essay summarizes unity and variety, balance and rhythm as key principles of design. Unity makes a work of art have a sense of oneness. This principle of design attempts to bring different things to belong together.

Variety, on the other hand, is the distinction that exists in an artistic work, and it helps to generate interest. For instance, when one uses different colors and shapes to paint a wall, he/she will be trying to attract the interest of many people since tastes are different. When different elements of shape, color, and line are unified conceptually, the final piece of work illustrates a visual unity. Unity and variety go hand in hand in making a piece of work.

Balance is the leveled-distribution of visual weight on a sculpture, picture, photograph, or any piece of art. The apparent weight describes how different elements of art are applied to an object. For example, there should be a uniform distribution of colors, writings, and curves on a sculpture such that no one point seems more attractive to the eye than the rest. In designs, the balance should be perfectly symmetrical to enable a sculpture balance along its implied center of gravity.

Balance prevents instances of overlap. Rhythm involves repetition of instances or objects using artistic elements like color and shape. In music, artists structure their experiences using rhythm to produce songs. When one takes a photo of the shape of his/her mouth when singing, there will be different shapes with instances of repetition forming a rhythm. The different shapes of mouths connect to form a repetitive structure, thus creating a rhythm.

Ancient Mediterranean Worlds

The second part of the essay summarizes The Oldest Art, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Classical world. The art of the past was in fragments and isolated. However, they remained to the present due to the organized culture of preservation of the ancient society. Also, the artists used durable materials and even caught their artworks in places of limited accessibility, such as underground caves. Areas like Egypt and Mesopotamia had hot and dry climatic conditions that were favorable for preservations of artistic works.

Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, had rulers who furthered the cultural achievements of their predecessors. Around 3400 B.C.E., Sumerians left both artifacts and words. They built ziggurat from sun-dried bricks. Markedly, this temple was the largest structure in the city. The Sumerians also used gold, silver, and lapis lazuli to curve objects like goats, warriors, and heads of their gods. According to Plato, Egyptians belief on the principle of continuity made their art not to change for ten thousand years.

The Egyptians had the Sphinx, the Palette of Narmer. Markedly, Narmer, which is the largest figure near the palette, had images that are balanced. There is also the pyramid, which had had three broad terraces and hollowed inner sanctuary. In Thebes, an Egyptian painting resembles Narmer hence showing cultural preservation. Egyptian art applied the principles of design. The Egyptians went on to bury their lavish arts in royal tombs to enhance preservation.

The Classical world refers to the cultures of the Greeks and Romans. Notably, art and architecture were public policies in the two cultures. The Greek architecture, sculpture, and paintings hugely affected the civilization of Rome. The Greek decorated human figures in funerals using the krater. As opposed to Egyptian sculptors, which are embedded in the granite block, the Greek sculptors are alienated from the stone. The Greeks even imagined their gods in human nature and continued to place a statue of the god and goddess in every sanctuary.

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IvyPanda. (2020, March 20). Design Principles in Oldest Art. https://ivypanda.com/essays/design-principles-in-oldest-art/

"Design Principles in Oldest Art." IvyPanda , 20 Mar. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/design-principles-in-oldest-art/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Design Principles in Oldest Art'. 20 March.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Design Principles in Oldest Art." March 20, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/design-principles-in-oldest-art/.

1. IvyPanda . "Design Principles in Oldest Art." March 20, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/design-principles-in-oldest-art/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Design Principles in Oldest Art." March 20, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/design-principles-in-oldest-art/.

• Narmer Palette, an Egyptian Archeological Find
• The Palette of Narmer: Descriptive Visual Analysis
• Ancient Egypt in "Gardner's Art Through the Ages" by Kleiner
• The Epic of Gilgamesh by Sumerians
• The Manas Wildlife Sanctuary
• Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu
• Civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt
• Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Reefs
• Comparison of Sumerian and Egyptian Civilization
• The Sumerian Achievements in Modern Times
• Green Industrial Cities' Designing
• Toronto Downtown Landscape
• Contextual Urban Design
• Product Design and Modernism
• Victorian Art’s Evaluation

Ethical Principles in Nursing

This essay about the ethical principles in nursing uses the unique analogy of culinary arts to illuminate how nurses blend core values like autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice into their practice. It compares patient autonomy to personalizing a menu, beneficence to nourishing and pleasing with a meal, non-maleficence to a chef’s careful avoidance of harm through food safety, and justice to providing equitable service to all patrons. The essay further explores the integration of modern technologies and diverse cultural practices into traditional nursing, similar to the incorporation of fusion cuisine in modern gastronomy. Additionally, it discusses nurses’ roles in ethical advocacy, likened to food critics who ensure quality and ethical standards. The analogy underscores the complexity and dedication involved in nursing, emphasizing continuous learning and adaptation, much like the mastery required in the culinary arts.

How it works

Consider for a moment the world of culinary arts, where chefs masterfully combine ingredients to create dishes that delight and nourish. Much like these chefs, nurses mix a palette of ethical principles to provide care that sustains both body and spirit. In this unusual comparison, let’s explore how the key ethical tenets of nursing—autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—parallel the meticulous and thoughtful world of gourmet cooking.

Autonomy as Personalization

In gourmet cooking, the concept of autonomy can be likened to tailoring a menu to suit dietary preferences and allergies.

Just as a chef adjusts recipes to respect individual needs and tastes, nurses respect patient autonomy by considering their values, beliefs, and preferences in care plans. This personalized approach ensures that care is not only appropriate but also deeply respectful of the patients’ personal narratives, much like a carefully crafted meal that considers all gastronomic desires and restrictions.

Beneficence as Nourishment

Beneficence in nursing is akin to the chef’s goal of nourishing and delighting patrons. Nurses aim to provide care that improves the health and well-being of patients, acting with kindness and compassion. This is not unlike a chef, who combines ingredients in a way that maximizes flavor while also providing nutritional benefits. Each intervention a nurse makes is designed to improve a patient’s condition, much as each ingredient in a dish is chosen for both taste and health benefits.

Non-Maleficence as Culinary Caution

The principle of non-maleficence in nursing is mirrored in the culinary world by the chef’s careful attention to avoid foodborne illnesses and cross-contamination. Just as a chef ensures that no harm comes from their meals, nurses diligently work to prevent harm to their patients. This involves meticulous attention to procedures, from medication administration to invasive procedures, ensuring that all actions are performed with the highest level of care and attention to safety.

Justice as Equitable Service

Justice in nursing is paralleled by the equity a head chef maintains in serving guests. It involves ensuring that all patients receive fair and equal treatment, regardless of their background. In a restaurant, this might mean ensuring that each guest receives the same high standard of service and food quality. In healthcare, it translates to advocating for equitable treatment of all patients, distributing resources fairly, and addressing biases that could affect patient care.

Contemporary Challenges: Fusion Cuisine

As the culinary world explores fusion cuisines that blend different culinary traditions, nursing too faces the integration of modern technologies and global perspectives into traditional practices. The introduction of telehealth, electronic health records, and culturally competent care requires nurses to blend traditional ethical considerations with modern innovations, ensuring that the essence of nursing—the caring human connection—is not lost in this fusion.

Ethical Advocacy: The Critic in the Kitchen

Beyond adhering to ethical principles, nursing involves ethical advocacy, much like a food critic who highlights both the strengths and areas for improvement in the culinary industry. Nurses advocate for patient welfare and ethical practices in healthcare settings, challenging policies and practices that compromise care quality or ethical standards. They are the voice for their patients, much like critics are for diners, ensuring that standards are not only met but continuously elevated.

Culinary and Nursing Mastery: A Commitment to Excellence

Finally, mastering the art of nursing, much like culinary excellence, requires continuous learning and adaptation. Nurses, like chefs, must remain abreast of advancements in their field, constantly refining their skills and expanding their knowledge base. This lifelong learning is crucial, as it allows both chefs and nurses to respond creatively and effectively to new challenges and opportunities.

In conclusion, the ethical practice of nursing can be uniquely understood through the metaphor of culinary arts. Just as a chef delicately balances flavors, textures, and nutritional elements to create a satisfying meal, nurses blend ethical principles to provide care that is safe, fair, compassionate, and respectful. This creative exploration underscores the complexity and beauty of nursing, revealing the deep commitment to ethics that forms the backbone of the profession. It’s a reminder that at the core of both fields, whether in a kitchen or a hospital, the goal is to serve and enrich the lives of others with skill, care, and respect.

Cite this page

Ethical Principles in Nursing. (2024, Apr 29). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/ethical-principles-in-nursing/

"Ethical Principles in Nursing." PapersOwl.com , 29 Apr 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/ethical-principles-in-nursing/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Ethical Principles in Nursing . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/ethical-principles-in-nursing/ [Accessed: 1 May. 2024]

"Ethical Principles in Nursing." PapersOwl.com, Apr 29, 2024. Accessed May 1, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/ethical-principles-in-nursing/

"Ethical Principles in Nursing," PapersOwl.com , 29-Apr-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/ethical-principles-in-nursing/. [Accessed: 1-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Ethical Principles in Nursing . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/ethical-principles-in-nursing/ [Accessed: 1-May-2024]

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A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History: Ten Design Principles

Edward A. Alpers published a new book co-authored with Thomas F. McDow (The Ohio State University) with Duke University Press, titled A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History .

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment. In addition to exploring non-European sources and diverse historical methodologies, they discuss classroom pedagogy and provide curriculum possibilities that will help instructors at any level enrich and deepen standard approaches to world history. Alpers and McDow draw readers into strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about a vast area with which many of them are almost entirely unfamiliar.

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What is a good standard?

An essay on W3C's design principles

by Bert Bos 06 Mar 2003 [ translations ]

Introduction

Why doesn't HTML include tags for style? Why can't you put text inside SMIL? Why doesn't CSS include commands to transform a document? Why, in short, does W3C modularize its specification and why in this particular way? This essay tries to make explicit what the developers in the various W3C working groups mean when they invoke words like efficiency, maintainability, accessibility, extensibility, learnability, simplicity, longevity, and other long words ending in -y.

Contrary to appearances, the W3C specifications are for the most part not designed for computers, but for people. You may think that <h1> , &egrave; and </ul> look ugly and unintuitive, but what would you think if they were called A378 , 30C9 and 38F0 respectively? Most of the formats are in fact compromises between human-readability and computer efficiency . Some are more readable than others, because we expect more people to read them, others can be more cryptic, because "only" programmers will look at the source.

But why do we want people to read them at all? Because all our specs are incomplete. Because people, usually other people than the original developers, have to add to them. The computer will not by itself invent a new technology. Somebody will look at HTML, understand it and think of a "cool" new technology to complement it. That's how the Web (and not only the Web) progresses.

For the same reason we try to keep the specifications of reasonable size . They must describe a useful chunk of technology, but not one that is too large for an individual to understand. After all, new ideas usually come from individuals.

The most commonly heard guideline on the Web is to separate structure and style. It is what led to the separation of HTML and CSS into two individual specifications. And a good advice it was, too. But behind this rule there are the deeper reasons of maintainability , implementability , finding the right experts , and many more, as explained below.

The Web is all about helping humans communicate, but what hopefully becomes clear from this essay is that writing specs also is a form of human communication. There is one word that summarizes nearly all the fancy keywords of this essay, and that is:

Maintainability

Both the specifications and the files or programs made according to them have to be maintained. There is hardly any data or service that never needs updating, moving or converting. Sometimes there is a program that can make the changes, but there always comes a time when a major change is needed and a human has to be involved. At that point it is good if the thing is of manageable size and has a fairly clear structure. After all, it may have been a long time ago since human eyes last saw it, and the original author has probably long since changed to a better job. It is probably unavoidable that, for example, an XSL style sheet is harder to change than a CSS one, but even so it is good that the designers of XSL spent some time on the right choice of keywords, provided a syntax for comments and allowed the code to be indented.

Of course, there is no help for authors (or programs!) that generate unreadable code. If you know the HTML format and you have looked at the source of some pages on the Web, you have probably wondered occasionally what monster was able to mangle the HTML code behind a simple Web page or an e-mail message in such a way that it is hard to believe that HTML was ever called a "structured language." Given the opportunity, some people will make a mess of anything.

Taking CSS as an example, CSS has many features that are there for the benefit of the people who maintain style sheets: the "@import" allows splitting large style sheets in logical units, the grouping syntax for selectors and rules allows keeping things in one place that the author expects to be changed together, shorthand properties provide a convenient (and short) way to set in a single rule several properties that usually occur together.

On the other hand, CSS stops short of even more powerful features that programmers use in their programming languages: macros, variables, symbolic constants, conditionals, expressions over variables, etc. That is because these things give power-users a lot of rope, but less experienced users will unwittingly hang themselves; or, more likely, be so scared that they won't even touch CSS. It's a balance. And for CSS the balance is different than for some other things.

But in fact, even with CSS, the power-user isn't left without means completely. There is also the DOM, that provides access to CSS through each person's favorite programming language. That's modularity .

People can only consciously work with a limited number of concepts at any time. Short-term memory, which is what you use when solving an intellectual problem, only holds six or seven items. Thus to solve a complex problem with many variables, we divide the problem into at most six chunks and build the solution with those chunks as building blocks. Each chunk is a partial problem, that has to be solved in turn, but it may be that we can delegate it to others. When the chunks are small enough to be assigned catchy names we call them "modules."

How do you know that you have divided the problem into the right chunks? Basically by trial and error, although we have some intuitions mostly based on our language skills.

When defining modules, we try to find "logical units," things that appear to belong together. It has nothing to do with logic, but with our ability to group those things under a common nomer. Because, if we can name a group with a short name, it probably means it is a known problem. Essentially we rely on metaphors, because we get the names from other problem areas. Thus we have "passwords," "style sheets," "firewalls," "protocols" and of course "Web" (some metaphors are better than others...)

Occasionally a module turns out to be a possible chunk in another problem. Thus the syntax and selector modules of CSS3 found use in the the STTS document transformation language and PNG found application as the format for cursors and bitmaps in SVG. Some document languages use a lot of HTML, but it is debatable whether to call that the usage of a large number of very small HTML modules, or simply a variant of HTML. Probably the latter, since their functionality overlaps so much with HTML that they often sin against the principle of minimum redundancy .

Minimum redundancy

This section is called " minimum redundancy" and not " no redundancy," because, as the introduction said, our technologies are used by humans, and humans can deal with redundancy, indeed have trouble when there is none. Too much redundancy is bad for the computer (or the programmer) though, because it means implementing the same thing several times. But it is good that, e.g., you can make a paragraph in HTML red in a couple of different ways. People have different styles and different mental models, and just by choosing a different style of working they can express something subtle that helps them, even though the computer cannot (yet) deal with it.

On the other hand, XML�1.0 defines a tree structure with four kinds of leaf nodes (text strings, processing instructions, empty elements and entities). Especially since they are abstract, it is not clear why there have to be four. Why not ten? or only one?

So what is too little and what is too much? That is hard to say. The overlap in functionality between different specifications should be kept small, because it can easily lead to incompatible models that programmers will have difficulty implementing, which in turn leads to bugs. Thus SVG doesn't provide a way to encode raster images, since PNG exists for that. On the other hand, within a single specification there may well be multiple ways to do the same thing, because it is easier to keep them consistent.

Take the example of coloring a paragraph red again: CSS offers different types of rules and different expressions that all mean "red." They add very little to the implementation effort but enhance the usability of CSS a lot. On the other hand, the attribute in HTML that makes a text red is officially deprecated, because it uses a different model from CSS (no cascading) and a slightly different syntax ("red" and "#FF0000" are OK, "#F00" is not).

One warning, though: accessibility often requires that the same information is provided in several ways, e.g., both as an image and as a text. To a certain extent the two formats indeed express the "same" information, but it is information at a different level, information that is only inferred from the actual data provided. We cannot express that information, so rather than an example of the Web having two ways of denoting the same thing, it is an example of the Web having no way to express something.

Accessibility

The word "accessibility" refers primarily to the degree in which something is accessible by people with disabilities, but in a wider sense it also measures resistance to external or temporary handicaps, such as noisy environments or bad lighting.

The main method to ensure accessibility is to encode data at as high a level of abstraction as possible, but it is also important to hook into already existing accessibility technologies.

The structure/style dichotomy is a clear example of the former: rather than encoding that something is red, W3C formats allow (and urge) an author to encode first of all the reason why it is red. The redness is added as a rule on top of that. With HTML, for example, rather than <font color="red"> , a careful author writes <em class="warning"> and puts the rule that warnings are displayed in red in a style sheet. This way somebody who has no means to display (or see) red at least has a chance to substitute something else that alerts him (such as a nasty sound).

With XML-based formats, at least the well-designed ones, the problem should be less than in HTML. In contrast to some versions of HTML, most XML formats do not have stylistic elements at all. In such formats you may see an element <warning> , but no <font> , so a style sheet is obligatory.

Sometimes a whole technology can be seen as an accessibility feature. SVG has other advantages over raster image formats, but a very important point is that it allows the image to be taken apart and traversed as a hierarchy of objects, rather than a collection of colored pixels. You can in effect read out an SVG graphic. And even better if the author has inserted textual descriptions of each object.

Isn't it more work to make accessible resources? Will people not be lazy and omit structure and annotation? Not always. Some people want to be good. Some are required to be good (by law, or by their employer's public image). But it is also the case that properly structured and annotated code is easier to maintain ; accessibility is sometimes an investment with an initial cost, but eventual benefit. In well-designed formats the accessibility features aren't added as an afterthought, but are merged with the features for maintainability and code structuring. An SVG graphic can be analyzed and the pieces used again to create a new graphic. A PNG image, on the other hand, is pretty much the end of the line.

The alt and longdesc attributes of HTML's img element were an afterthought. As a consequence it feels like an extra effort to have to think of an alt (=alternative) text. And if you think of a good one, it may not be possible, because of the limitations of HTML attributes: no way to emphasize a word of the alt text, no way to make a list or a table, etc.

The img element was added to HTML without thinking about accessibility (or about some other things for that matter, such as fallbacks and captions) and the alternatives that were proposed, fig and object , simply came too late and never really caught on. Accessibility features have to be integrated from the start, in the specifications as well as in the tools that implement them.

Device-independency

If a specification doesn't have to depend on a specific (type of) device, then it probably shouldn't. Or it should be split in a dependent and an independent part. Device-independency is in many ways the same as accessibility, although for different reasons.

A specification like CSS is somewhat device-dependent: specifying a font only makes sense on a visual medium; there is no interpretation of font on a speech synthesizer. CSS in fact divides all devices into classes and allows styles for each class to be grouped. It is different for HTML. Precisely because CSS (and XSL) takes care of the device-dependent parts, HTML can be device- in dependent. Thanks to that, you can do a lot more with HTML than display it on a screen (see also repurposing ).

It is sometimes claimed that HTML isn't device-independent, because an HTML author assumes that his reader has a convenient medium to read text, such as a book, a magazine, a laser printer or a reasonably large screen. Reading a 5-page article on the display of most mobile phones is not really pleasant. But is that HTML's fault, or is it just that certain content is more suitable for certain environments? HTML is just as capable of expressing weather reports as novels. What is blamed on HTML is probably just shortcomings in current style sheet implementations.

Not only is it desirable to be able to use a resource on different devices at the same time, but a valuable resource should also be designed to survive future changes in technology: with technology changing as fast as it does now, a document written on an up-to-date system 4 years ago may already be unreadable, because the hardware isn't made anymore, because the software maker has gone broke, etc. Not all HTML files are worth keeping for 50 years, but HTML should at least make it possible that documents written in it are still readable for the next generation(s). Gutenberg's bible is still readable after 500 years, why should your publications be worth any less? (See also longevity .)

Internationality

To be World-Wide, the Web must be usable by people who don't speak the language of its developers. In general, it makes little sense to develop a format for the exchange of information that is only usuable for one or two human languages. Thus, if a specification allows human readable text anywhere, it must allow text in any language. That text must allow all characters from the Unicode repository and it probably should allow multiple ways of encoding them, including at least UTF-8. ASCII is not forbidden, but it cannot be the only encoding.

Don't assume that text is always horizontal, left to right and that there are spaces between the words. Not to everybody does 7/1/92 mean January 7, '92, and in many languages, 3,141 is close to pi and 3.141 is a thousand times larger.

Also, when you write a specification for the W3C, remember that W3C specifications are written in English, but mostly read by people for whom English is only a second language.

Extensibility

It would be really nice if a technology was right the first time... No different versions, no differences between applications, no need to upgrade. But in practice everything needs a version 2 and often a version 3 as well. So it is best to take this fact into account when designing version 1.

Of course, you cannot know what will be in version 2, let alone a version 3, but there are nevertheless some things you can do to make future extensions easier, in particular in the form of reserved pieces of syntax behind which you can hide new features in the future. You can make a language forward compatible to a certain extent in this way.

One easy trick is to add a "magic number" at the start of the file, typically including the version number, so that applications written for version 1 will recognize that a file is not the right version. That helps against misinterpreted data, but the method is rather blunt: the application doesn't do anything with data that is too new.

Some types of information are amenable to graceful degradation, i.e., version-1 applications can be made to approximate a desired effect within their limits, while newer applications will do the full version-2 effect.

HTML, e.g., has one simple rule that works reasonably well for text documents, and that is to treat all text in unknown elements as if it were simple inline text and to ignore unknown attributes. The developers of new versions thus have two choices, depending on whether the best fallback for a new feature is to omit the text or display it inline. HTML also has a magic number at the top of the file, but the method works well enough that browsers do not have to give up if they see a document with too new a version.

CSS has a slightly more sophisticated method, because it allows authors in many cases to include explicit alternatives for older implementations. Old programs will read what they understand and skip the rest, while newer ones will read both, and if the author has done it right, the newer features will override the older ones.

An even more sophisticated method is to provide a method for the author to specify on a case by case basis whether an approximation is acceptable or not. The C language, e.g., provides a keyword "#error" that a programmer can use to signal to the compiler that a certain feature is obligatory and that without it continuing is useless. SOAP (a set of conventions for developing restricted XML-based formats, see [SOAP1.1] ) has a similar feature, as does P3P [P3P1.0] .

In C, the syntax looks like this:

In P3P, the syntax is like this:

Where FEATURE is some property that is not predefined by P3P 1.0.

Learnability

You sometimes hear people say that syntax is not important. Not true: syntax is one of the most important things there is. (Maybe what they really mean is that their syntax is better than yours...) They probably refer to the fact that there are multiple ways to write down the same model. That is true, but it by no means follows that all ways are equivalent. It is a philosophical debate whether a person's language determines his mental model of the world or whether the language is merely the surface structure of a deeper model that is essentially the same for everybody. For human languages we leave the debate to others, but for our formal, limited languages we must follow the advice from mathematics: there is nothing like a suggestive notation for understanding the model.

The standard example from mathematics is d t /d x , which looks like (and is treated by physicists as) an infinitesimal change of t divided by an infinitesimal change of x. Mathematicians can tell you exactly in what ways it behaves like a division and it what ways it doesn't, but the fact is that for nearly all formulas that occur in physics it does behave like a division. And it makes life very easy for physicist that they can simplify (d x /d t )(d t /d y ) to d x /d y . It is easy because it looks the same as simplifying (2/3)(3/7) to 2/7. The notation for differential equations hasn't always been like that, but it is not for nothing that all other notations are forgotten.

Learnability, then, has a lot to do with readability .

Readability

A notation can be too short. If a seldomly used feature takes only one letter ("t"), then the few times you see the letter you will probably have to look it up, if you don't overlook the letter completely. It is better as a complete word ("translate").

A notation can also be too long. If a keyword you use all the time takes 20 letters to type ("shapeoutlinedata"), than it could probably have been abbreviated ("d"). These examples are from SVG (which gets them right), but you can find similar cases in most languages.

Unfortunately, sometimes your best guesses turn out to be wrong. The designers of XML thought it was helpful to open and close an element with the full name of the element ( <heading>...</heading> ) and for the usages they foresaw that was indeed quite reasonable: in long text with sparse mark-up the ability to see what element you close outweighs the small redundancy [XMLgoals] . They thought allowing a shorter form (such as </> or <>) would just add to the complexity of the language. But XML is now more often used for data in which the mark-up overwhelms the content in between, and line after line of opening tag almost next to the identical closing tag is hiding the essential data by their redundancy. XML isn't broken, but in hindsight it could have been made somewhat less expensive to use.

Of course, you can always use something else than XML. And if readability of the source is important you probably should. But it comes at a cost: you will have to think about many things that come for free when you adopt XML (how to escape Unicode characters, how to ensure unambiguousness of the syntax, what delimiters to use for nested structures, how to parse white space, etc.).

One way to use both XML and a readable format is to use converters between the two. For MathML, for example, there are several tools that allow people to edit mathematics in a familiar notation. Once there are such tools, readability of the source becomes less important. Not un important, though: see longevity .

CSS has its own syntax because readability is very important for a language that is used by nearly as many people as HTML itself. It could have been based on SGML, and originally there were indeed proposals for SGML-based syntaxes (see [Lie99] ) and there even existed a US military standard ( [FOSI] ), but there was never any question that CSS syntax is better. (XML didn't exist at the time, but it wouldn't have helped since it is more verbose than SGML and allows fewer symbols as punctuation.)

Many other languages opt for a mixture of XML and some other syntax. XML by itself only uses angular brackets as delimiters, everything else must be done with keywords. People are generally more comfortable when other symbols, such as colons (:), semicolons (;), curly braces {�} and parentheses (�) also carry meaning. SMIL, for example, expresses times and time intervals with a notation like 3:25.5 rather than, say <time><min>3</min><sec>25.5</sec></time> . SVG similarly uses a compact notation for paths that is much more readable than anything with XML tags could ever be. But both SMIL and SVG still use XML for the parts where verbosity is less of a problem, thus making the job of the designers of the specification easier at an acceptable cost in readability.

And there are languages for which readability is rather less important compared to, say efficiency . PNG is an example. It is a binary format.

According to Jakob Nielsen, people are most productive if the computer's response to their click takes less than a second. People lose their concentration if a page takes longer than ten seconds to appear.

Of course, computers get more powerful and bandwidth increases continually, at least on average. But at the same time new devices are being connected to the Web, such as mobile phones and TVs, and they are much slower. They too will improve, eventually, although they will probably always be behind desktop computers. But then there will no doubt be new appliances (and applications). Designers of Web technology will always have to consider efficiency.

Speed loss can occur at the server, if producing a response to a query is too complex; at the network, if there is too much data; and at the client, if visualizing the data is too hard.

When designing formal languages to write resources in, designers should ensure that the languages are easy to parse and reasonably compact. "Progressive rendering" (the effect that displaying a response starts before all the data has arrived) can help as well. CSS, for example, has been designed in such a way that every line of a document can be displayed as soon as it arrives (although for text inside tables that requires some extra work by the style sheet writer). Caches help as well, and thus splitting documents in cachable and uncachable parts is a good thing. E.g., HTML and XLink allow documents to be assembled from parts, some of which may be shared among several documents. Sometimes facilities for compression or switching to a binary format may even be needed.

It is in general a good idea to provide methods in a language to remove redundancy , (although they have to be weighed against the added complexity of the language). Thus HTML and SVG have a mechanism to assign a "class" to an element and define the style for all elements of that class in a single place. SVG also allows re-use of graphical objects in multiple places: drawing a 12-point star thus only requires a single point, displayed 12 times in different places. CSS likewise has several mechanisms for grouping rules.

However, intuition isn't always a good guide when estimating efficiency. Network throughput isn't linear: a message consisting of a single TCP package is much faster than one with two packets, but four packets typically take less time than two separate messages of two packets (see [Frystyk97] ). Java is often perceived to be slow, but Jigsaw (an HTTP server in Java) can typically hold its own against Apache (an HTTP server in C), because much of the perceived slowness comes from starting the Java virtual machine; once that runs, Java is fast enough (see [JigPerf] ). And as a W3C study showed some time ago, most gain comes from radical changes: replacing GIF with PNG and HTTP/1.0 with HTTP/1.1 certainly helps a lot, but not nearly as much as replacing an image by some text with a style sheet. With SVG, the possibilities for that will be greatly enlarged.

Binary or text format

Most W3C specifications define a formal language for describing some type of resource: HTML describes simple text files, SVG describes vector graphics, PNG describes raster images, HTTP describes the dialog between a client and a server and URLs describe the path to a certain resource. There are exceptions, such as the several WAI guidelines, that describe meta-rules about how to design programs and specifications (a bit like this essay, in fact, but more precise...). But most people working on W3C specifications have to start with the choice: do we create a binary format or a text based one?

In most cases the answer will be "text based," because text formats allow easier bootstrapping and debugging: you can create files with a text editor, so that developing an dedicated editor or converter can wait until later; you can inspect a file to see what should have happened, in case a program does not do what you expect; and last but not least: if in 50 years or so the specification has accidentally been lost or become hard to find, there will be a chance that from looking at a few files you can reverse-engineer enough to get the essential information out again. (This is sometimes, rather optimistically, called "self-descriptive." The formats would only really be self-descriptive if every file included the text of the specification...)

Text based formats often also allow for unforeseen extensions later, because they typically have quite a lot of redundancy. Many programming languages have thus acquired conventions for putting things in structured comments or have gotten new keywords in later versions. Although binary formats do typically have some built-in extension mechanism, it is much more limited (e.g., GIF and PNG extension chunks).

But maybe the choice for text-based formats is simply made because the IETF recommends them, or because somebody in management requires XML...

In fact, binary formats aren't so bad. They are often more efficient to process and transport. They are typically smaller: the whole purpose of ZIP, MPEG and JPEG, e.g., is to use as few bits as possible. They are usually faster to process, since they need simpler parsers.

Parsers for a well-designed text-based language don't have to be inefficient, although the text-to-binary conversions typically make them slower by a certain factor. More importantly, their added complexity often leads to more bugs.

And is the lack of extensibility of binary formats so bad? Maybe not. Even if a text format is theoretically extensible, it may not be so in practice. If the extension is not backwards compatible in any useful way it is better to design a completely new format. HTML has been extended through three versions: 2.0, 3.2 and 4.0, but it cannot be taken any further without serious problems for implementers. XHTML is the successor of HTML, but is a new format, not an extension.

In conclusion: most W3C formats are text based and that will probably remain so, but don't assume that binary formats are forbidden. There are costs on both sides to be considered.

Implementability

The easier a specification is to implement, the more implementations will be made and the more compatible they will be. Easy implementation also means that implementers have time to be creative and come up with novel ways to use the technology. Implementations will be cheaper; in fact they can be virtually free if they can be made by individuals in their spare time. Fixing bugs is among the most expensive operations known to developers, especially if there are people that, unwittingly, have come to rely on them. Avoiding bugs is thus of the foremost importance. Implementability can come from simplicity or from building on well-known, existing components .

Building on existing components means using technologies that programmers are familiar with, such as context-free grammars (expressed as EBNF or some variant) or XML 1.0.

It does not mean adding dependencies on new or ill-understood technologies. XSLT, e.g., should probably not have used XML Namespaces. It could have distinguished between commands and data in more conventional ways. XSLT is now in danger of undergoing the same evolution towards incompatible subsets as HTML, which used SGML, another technology not understood by developers.

As Jakob Nielsen says, it is unsafe to use a new specification until at least a year after it has become official ( [Nielsen00] , page 34).

W3C's specifications thus far aren't very complex, at least not when compared to those of some other standards organizations, but they are already getting more intricate. W3C probably has to look at the IETF again for how to keep specs simple, because already one of the most often heard complaints is that the number of interdependencies, especially among the XML family of specs, is becoming hard to deal with, especially for developers who create their first XML-based programs (and if we want the Web to develop, we'll need many first-time developers).

Indeed, XML 1.0 itself is already too complicated for some of the applications for which it was designed, as shown by the project that has been started on the Internet to define a simplified version (see [Park00] ).

The existence of two implementations of a specification is no guarantee that there will be more, but it does give a hint. It is therefore a good idea that many W3C working groups now ask for two or more implementations before submitting their work as a "Proposed Recommendation."

This image, which is based on one by Donald Norman, shows seven stages a person has to go through to complete an activity. If we start at the top with the person's goals, then from those goals he forms a set of intentions to change certain things in the world. He translates the intentions into a sequence of actions and executes them. He subsequently perceives the new state of the world, interprets what he sees, and compares it against what he intended to change. He may have to do another cycle if his goals were not met.

If there are tools involved, as is the case when the world is the world of the Web, then the intentions have to be translated into actions that the particular set of tools is capable of. If the way a person thinks about a problem is different from the way the tool maker did, then this translation can be difficult: think of it as trying to move from one square of a chess board to an adjacent one when all you can do is make jumps with the knight. Norman calls this step the gulf of execution.

The tools in our case are software and formal languages. Good programs can hide bad languages somewhat, but when the model behind the language is hard to understand or complex, such programs are hard to make. And sometimes people don't know the right tools to use.

Take an example: graphic designers want to create visuals on Web pages that consist of (in their mental model) partly overlapping images. Before there was CSS2, the only tool they had was the <table> element of HTML. But table cells do not overlap. However, some clever software makers were able to present an interface to them where they could put images anywhere they wanted and behind the scenes the program would cut up the images in tiny pieces and those pieces that didn't overlap would each occupy a cell of a huge table. That worked, most of the time, but when somebody else, not possessing the author's tool, would try to interpret what was going on, or even change the visual, he wouldn't be able to make head or tail of it. Which brings us to the other gulf.

The gulf of evaluation on the right side of the diagram represents the difficulty a user has in mapping the visuals and messages from the system back into his own mental model. The problems here may be that the system presents incomplete or ambiguous information ("Syntax error in file") or that it employs metaphors that do not match those of the user ("green means error"). In the example above, tables were an incorrect metaphor for overlapping images.

By default, documents on the Web are written for eternity. If something is worth writing it is worth keeping. You never know when something stops being useful or who depends on it. As a consequence you should never break links. That part is well known.

But you should also write the contents in such a way that it is likely to survive changes in technology, because converting old documents may someday become too expensive. How to achieve that? Unless you can predict the future, the best rule of thumb is to stick to standards, including W3C's specifications and guidelines.

Indeed, despite Tim's pleas (see [TBL98] ), it is unlikely that many current URLs will still work in 50 years, but the documents they referred to will still be there, and, if written in HTML, be readable as well.

That puts a responsibility on the developers of specifications. They have to always ask themselves whether the specs promote, or at least allow, Web resources to be made in such a way that they are likely to be still decipherable in 50 years time. Since developers are not much more capable of predicting the future than anybody else, they follow rules of thumb as well:

• Do not put in features that you already know will be deprecated in the next version.
• Use simple formats that can be decoded if the specification gets lost, maybe use text formats
• Be device-independent whenever possible or put device-dependent parts in separate modules.
• et cetera, see the table of contents of this essay.

And what about those broken URLs? The traditional way in which information has been kept from oblivion is by providing redundant metadata inside the resource: a library can catalogue a book that they found again from the information on the title page. On the Web we can actually do a little better, since we can make the metadata (partially) machine-readable. It is thus a good idea to include standard fields in each document format for information that helps identify the resource: META and LINK elements in HTML, embedded RDF in SVG, @author/@version in Java, etc.

Backwards compatibility

There are two kinds of backwards compatibility: the obvious one of a version of a specification with previous versions of the same, and another one of new technologies with earlier ones.

Nobody forgets about the former, because there is nothing the developers of a new version know so well as the previous version they are trying to replace. Backwards compatibility is always hotly discussed.

But the latter is less obvious. It is, in a sense, the complement of extensibility and modularity . Whereas those two stress the importance of developing technology in such a way that it will work together with future new technologies, backwards compatibility stresses the importance of working well with what is already there. No new technology is designed in a void.

Not only does a new technology normally have to be compatible with earlier ones in technical matters, but also in the mental models that users have of the old technology. Introducing new paradigms always has a cost, that has to be set off against future benefits.

Take the example of CSS: people using HTML, and indeed most word-processors, are used to attaching stylistic information to concrete elements. To make style sheets acceptable at all, CSS has to allow people to continue working in the same way, while expanding their options.

As a counter-example, XSL takes a different approach to styling: people first create the style in the form of a template and then inject elements into it. It requires more motivation from users, but therefore it offers new possibilities. It aims at users that can afford to learn about recursion and loops and that need to style abstract documents that will be generated in the future (dynamic reports from a database, for example), rather than concrete articles that have already been written.

Sometimes a new technology replaces a previous one, although it is rare that it replaces the old one completely. PNG in principle is able to replace GIF completely, and XHTML can completely replace HTML. But even in such cases, some form of backward-compatibility is needed in the form of facilties for mechanical conversion of resources to the new format.

"Mechanical" means that the amount of intelligence necessary should be limited. For example, SVG partly replaces PNG, viz., in cases where PNG is used to display diagrams or graphs. Those would be better in SVG, but the backwards-compatibility of SVG with PNG is almost non-existent. Of course, in this case the benefits of SVG for images of this kind is so great that nobody complains about the lack of compatibility (but even so, SVG provides a trivial way to do the conversion: wrap the PNG in an SVG object without any interpretation).

The Web itself is designed to be backwards compatible. The URLs that give the location of resources allow for access via FTP and other protocols rather than just HTTP, and HTTP in turn allows for arbitrary types of files, not just HTML. And, as a final example, HTML allows any kind of file to be hyperlinked (via the A element) or included (by means of the IMG or OBJECT elements), not just HTML and PNG.

Interoperability

This new-fangled word is a variant of that other, rather better known new-fangled word, compatibility, and it means simply that something (a document, a program) written according to our specifications should work identically across different applications and different computers. "Identically" of course has to be qualified: you cannot display a document exactly the same on the screen of a handheld organizer as on a 19 inch color screen. But you can get the same experience and the same information from that document.

The issue is much clearer if you compare typical browsers: sure, they have different features, that's why people prefer one over the other, but you don't expect a page that looks blue in one browser to be red in another, or (what sometimes happens:) readable in one browser but not in another.

The developers of a specification, then, have to ensure that what they specify can be implemented by all the different implementers: it should not depend on a certain platform, it should not be open to different interpretations, and, if possible, it should be testable.

Often, when there are parts that can be interoperable and others that cannot (or only in a limited way), it make sense to split a specification into two separate ones, each with its own interoperability requirements.

For example, we don't expect that every program that can display static text documents (HTML) can also display dynamic presentations (SMIL) or vice versa, and thus HTML and SMIL are two independent modules.

Repurposing of content

The large circle in the diagram represents human communication with the Web as an intermediary: somebody has an idea (at the top); he represents it in a machine-readable way and enters it into the Web (the red part); the Web transports it and displays it to somebody; that somebody interprets what he sees (at the bottom) and may in turn become the originator of new ideas.

There are various smaller circles in the diagram, that each represent modifications of the information, hopefully enhancements, but possibly degradations. The top circle, reflection, is a process under the control of the author; the bottom circle, different views, is controlled by the reader; but the circles in between can be done by either of them, by other people, or automatically by programs such as Web spiders.

It is these smaller circles that represent the extra value that the Web can bring to human communication. But for them to work well, the original representation has to be suitable for manipulation by software.

The collective name for the manipulations done in these smaller circles is repurposing, i.e., the adaptation of some piece of data for a new purpose.

For a new technology to be successful, it has to come at the right time. Waiting too long before developing an essential module means that ad-hoc solutions will be deployed, which causes backwards-compatibility problems and high costs for the people who have to convert things to the new standards once they arive. Developing something too early may mean that it will be forgotten by the time it is needed, or worse, that it can't be used, because the intermediate steps have turned out to be different than what was expected.

But what is the right time? Hard to say. But some of the symptoms of its arrival are that people start asking for something (although it is quite an art to recognize what they are asking exactly), that there are people available with ideas, and especially that the solution appears obvious.

Use what is there

Looking back to the first 10 years of the Web, it certainly looks as if there has been a revolution. The Web now runs on HTML, HTTP and URLs, none of which existed before the '90s. But it isn't just because of the quality of these new formats and protocols that the Web took off. In fact, the original HTTP was a worse protocol than, e.g., Gopher or FTP in its capabilities, and HTML back then also wasn't quite what it is now: no embedded images, no tables, no colors...

So in the early days many people had their home pages on FTP servers rather than HTTP servers. And that fact shows nicely what made the Web possible at all: it didn't try to replace things that already worked, it only added new modules , that fit in the existing infrastructure. HTML can be served by FTP or Gopher servers; browsers can display plain text or FTP directory listings; URLs allow for all kinds of protocols, etc.

And nowadays (the year 2000), it may look like everything is XML and HTTP, but that impression is only because the "old" stuff is so well integrated that you forget about it: there is no replacement for e-mail or Usenet, for JPEG or MPEG, and many other essential parts of the Web.

Of course, technologies may get replaced by better solutions over time. GIF is slowly being replaced by PNG, SMIL replaces several other formats, ditto for SVG. The Web is in constant evolution. There is no "day 0" at which everything starts from scratch. At any time there are old and young technologies working together.

It has to be like that. Technologies improve at different speeds. Trying to release even three or four new specifications in sync is already stretching our capacities. And throwing away software that works, although imperfectly, and teaching everybody something new would be a huge waste of resources.

There is, unfortunately, a tendency in every standards organization, W3C not excluded, to replace everything that was created by others with things developed in-house. It is the not-invented-here syndrome, a feeling that things that were not developed "for the Web" are somehow inferior. And that "we" can do better than "them." But even if that is true, maybe the improvement still isn't worth spending a working group's resources on.

And especially, don't design a technology to work only with things that haven't proven themselves yet, no matter how promising they sound. The risk is too high. For example, at the moment (2000), XLink promises to become a powerful technology for adding hyperlinks to new XML formats, but CSS3, which is currently being developed and which has to style hyperlinks in XML documents cannot rely on XLink. It has to deal with non-Xlink hyperlinks as well.

Design by committee

Nearly all specifications are created by a committee rather than by a single individual. The working groups of W3C typically consist of some 10 to 20 people, who work together on a new technology for a year or longer.

"Design by committee" has a bad name (specs that are a patchwork of inconsistent solutions, often redundant, and thus too big and too hard to learn), but in reality it doesn't automatically produce bad results. "Two know more than one" is another proverb, and that is exactly why working groups exist: more pairs of eyes mean more checking for errors, more creativity in finding solutions to problems, and more experience in knowing what worked or didn't work in the past.

But the problems of "design by committee" still have to be avoided. Around 15 people seems to be the limit, larger groups tend to form (informal) sub-groups and lose too much time in communicating rather than developing.

Smaller groups produce more consistent and easier to use specifications, but they may omit some things that they didn't know anybody needed. The solution seems to be to create a wider circle of interested people around them, in the form of a public mailing list.

That is how W3C develops its technologies: a working group recruited among experts, and a public mailing list for other interested people. There may be some there that have only interest in one detail or that only occasionally have time to discuss the developments. In the working group they would just have hindered the process, but on the mailing list they can give valuable contributions.

The IETF shows that it is possible to develop technologies with a single, open group of people, without distinguishing between people that have committed to a minimum amount of effort and those that haven't. But IETF groups tend to be about low-level, very technical specifications, whereas W3C specifications are (at least perceived to be) much closer to the average user and thus attract more interested people. It may also be that the environment has changed: the public on the Internet now is different from that before the Web.

Of course, the two-level system assumes a willingness of the committee to listen to the outside. It takes some time to scan the mailing list for important messages and, when needed, to answer them. But most of all it requires an openness on the part of the committee to discuss their reasons, even if they sometimes have to do with short-term company policies. And it requires a matching openness on the part of the public to accept those reasons as valid.

If a specification is so large that there are experts on individual parts of it, but nobody wants to be called an expert on the whole, then the specification is definitely too large. Splitting it into two parts and setting up a working group for each part will almost certainly make for a better result in the end.

No amount of formal methods can substitute for an expert who is capable of holding a whole spec in his head to see the inconsistencies and redundancies.

I assume in most of this essay that most specifications are written for programmers. That may not always be the case. The important part is to identify the audience and write consistently for that audience. Even if you chose the "wrong" audience, it probably still leads to more readable specs than when you try to write for "everybody."

Don't forget that most people are short on time: reading a spec of 50 pages is just about possible, although 15 would have been better, but who is going to read 385 pages? The typical programmer will read the first 20 pages, look at a few more examples, and then start programming right away. He will fill in what he didn't read with what he thinks would be the logical extension... Unfortunately, specs aren't always logical; all too often they are the result of compromises between the committee members. Maybe that shouldn't be the case, but that's how it is.

Indeed, sometimes it makes sense to make a spec shorter by removing explanations, because it will mean more people will read it to the end.

In fact, removing explanations can be a good thing for another reason as well: the more explanations, the higher the chance that they contradict each other. It is better to put explanations and annotations in a separate, non-normative document, or maybe in a book.

But do not remove examples. A well-chosen example can often replace several paragraphs of explanation. And moreover they can be used as a rough test case for new implementations.

Programmers typically like to find out how things work while programming, rather than while reading English. It is a paradox: giving less explanation makes them understand better. I guess programmers like puzzles...

PS. Style sheets allow one to present alternative views of the same document, for example one with and one without the examples.

Technology changes, the future can't be predicted, and often specification writers will have to publish something that they expect to change in the future, simply because there is an urgent need for a standard. Hopefully they will have gotten the extensibility right…

But in general, stability of a specification is a desirable characteristic. Having to re-learn how to do something is costly, creating new programs to do the same thing in a different way is costly, and converting existing documents and other resources to a different format is also costly, so changes with little or no benefit should be avoided.

The Web is a revolution. But let it not be one that eats its children. For all its shortcomings, HTML is quite a useful little format. There is absolutely no need to replace it yet.

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Un group releases investor guidance for eu corporate sustainability due diligence law.

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A picture taken on May 5, 2021 shows a flag of the European Union flying outside the European ... [+] commission headquarters in Brussels. (Photo by Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP) (Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images)

The United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment has released an investor briefing on the European Union’s new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive . The CSDDD creates a legal liability for companies relating to environmental and human rights violations within their supply chain. PRI’s guidance is intended to help investors navigate the repercussions of the CSDDD.

As the name implies, the CSDDD, also called the CS3D, establishes a corporate due diligence standard on sustainability issues for businesses operating in the EU. In this case, sustainability most directly applies to environmental concerns, climate change, and human rights.

The new due diligence requirements apply not only to the direct actions of the company, but also to their subsidiaries and supply chain. EU based companies, as well as non-EU companies that conduct a set level of business in the EU, could become liable for the actions of their suppliers.

The CSDDD will be phased in over five years. Companies with 5,000 employees and €1,500 million turnover will be impacted in 2027. Companies with 3,000 employees and €900 million turnover will be impacted in 2028. Companies with 1,000 employees and €450 million turnover will be impacted in 2029.

To reach an agreement, the final CSDDD was significantly watered-down from the initial proposal. After delays, the European Parliament approved the CSDDD on April 24, moving it one step closer to formal adoption by the European Union. Once adopted by the EU, the members states will have two years to implement the directive at the national level.

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With the adoption of the CSDDD likely, PRI produced the investor briefing. PRI is a UN supported organization of international investors. It was launched in 2006 by UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact. PRI “works to understand the investment implications of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors” and “to support its international network of investor signatories in incorporating these factors into their investment and ownership decisions.”

Currently, 5,372 investment organizations have signed a pledge committing to the six Principles . The commitment begins “As institutional investors, we have a duty to act in the best long-term interests of our beneficiaries. In this fiduciary role, we believe that environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues can affect the performance of investment portfolios (to varying degrees across companies, sectors, regions, asset classes and through time).”

The PRI investor briefing analyzes the CSDDD as it relates to the investment sector and ties it to the broader ESG movement . The report notes that the CSDDD will impact only a small number of financial companies, as the threshold standards are very high. However, it further notes that “under PRI’s 2023 reporting framework, 41% of European investors said they used the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and / or the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises to identify intended and unintended sustainability outcomes connected to their investment activities.” Therefore, PRI believes investors will expect CSDDD level risk assessments from companies to calculate the risk.

As the CSDDD generally aligns with the broader sustainability and ESG movement, PRI has been a supporter of its adoption throughout the process. “PRI strongly welcomes this directive. Mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence supports investors’ risk and impact analysis and enables better informed investee engagement. The final requirements are proportionate and practicable and should play a critical role in the achievement of the EU Green Deal which is fundamentally intertwined with EU competitiveness, security and resilience.”

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