Designer Secrets Revealed!!! Three Types of Balance

Designer Digital Scrapbooking Tutorial
by Amy Duquette, Creative Team Member

Over the next few weeks, the Everyday Digital Scrapbooking Team will bring you design secrets that you can't live without. Have you ever wondered what to do when staring at a blank page? Well, wonder no more. Bookmark our site and we will inspire you to create every day!
Our secret this week is how to design with BALANCE!

Visit our Sponsor: SarahB Designs

Creating Balance In Your Layouts by Amy Duquette


One of the biggest obstacles we face when creating a layout is trying to create balance and make the layout visually appealing to the eye. In order to create balance ourselves we can apply some simple principles that have been used for years by painters, advertising agencies, graphic designers and many other types of artists.

Let's explore the different kinds of balance

1. Symmetrical Balance - This type of balance occurs when:

• you draw an invisible line with your eyes down the middle of your layout, either verticle or horizontal, and
  
• each side is exactly the same with the same elements or weighted the same.
  

This type of balance is a sure guarantee that the overall composition of the layout will be well balanced. Below is an example of a symmetrical balance. If you remove the word art in the layout you will see that the left side mirrors the right side in composition. I placed the word art in the lower right corner to draw your eyes across the entire layout before focusing on the word art.


Another example of symmetry is "Inverted Symmetry" where one side is not a mirror image of the other but rather very close that our eyes believe symmetry to be so. An example of this would be a playing card..its the exact same on both the top and bottom except for one side is backwards from the other. In my example below you will see that if you remove the journaling the layout is basically the same in composition on the top and bottom, with the bottom mirrored and them flipped to look opposite from the top.

Article continued below

Visit Our Sponsor: Angela Sharrow

2. Asymmetrical Balance - This type of balance occurs when:

• you have the focal point of your layout off-center or
  
• if you are using a variety if different shaped elements like one large photo and several smaller ones.
  

This type of balance can be easily achieved by using one photo or one focal point and leaving the rest as white space. The white space itself can balance out the layout. In the example below I placed my photo and focal point off-center and not directly in the corner. I used a variety of different elements that all tied in with my layout through colour or theme.

Article continued below

Visit our Sponsor: SaraAmerie

3. Radial Balance - This type of balance occurs when:

• you have lines, shapes, colours, elements growing out of a "middle" point or
  
• center of your layout.
  

If you look at my example below you will see how I used different patterned papers to get that effect.

Article conclusion below

Visit Our Sponsor: Suzz' Stuf4U

Your eyes are a very good judge of what is balanced and what isn't. If you look at your layout and you think something is out of place or something is missing, you are probably right. Also try looking at your layout upside down or from across the room, that offers you a different perspective than what your eyes are use to and it forces your eyes to look at the elements of the page as a whole and not focus in on just the photos themselves.

Visit our Sponsor: Mlamarre Designs