About

Elements of design is a design learning tool developed by IDC, IIT Bombay. It is an interactive web space where students and aspiring designers can learn about the basics of design.

The tool's Overview shows us the inter-relation between the elements of design - point, line, plane and volume. The elements have features like - shape, size, position, orientation, texture and colour. Together these form the Visual features. Understanding these well is helpful for studying and applying the principles of design.

A designer has to use principles of design in combinations to make a piece which functions/communicates clearly and effectively. In our tool, we learn about principles of designs through two categories, structural and relational.

All principles related to construction of a design are included in structural principles. This section includes concepts such as negative and positive space, figure and ground, alignment, proportion, symmetry, repetition, grids, illusion and framing.

All principles that are relative i.e. need another element to be compared with are included in Relational Principles. This section includes concepts such as movement, depth, order, hierarchy, sequence, balance, unity, emphasis contrast and variety.

Each of our interactions are designed in a way that they make every concept simple and easy to understand. They are also backed with regular annotations to explain the reason behind each step.

Elements of design can be a demonstrative tool for teachers to introduce the basics of design. For beginner design students it can play a role of being a self -study tool or a revision tool. For an aspiring designer it can be the first step to learning design.

The main focus of the 'Design Tools' of which Elements of Design is one, is to be useful to the design eco-system comprising students, faculty, and professionals who are or have been a part of formal learning from design schools. These design tools are meant to help them with high quality, authentic learning material and bridge the quality and quantity gap currently faced by most design schools.