Member lesson

Scale and contrast of scale

Lesson 12 of 27 in Composition and layout.

Contrast In Scale - Visual Hierarchy In Poster Design | Design Lesson · Gareth David Studio

Lesson

Nothing on a screen has a size. A logo at 400 pixels is enormous on a phone and a postage stamp on a billboard, so what a viewer actually reads is the ratio between one element and the next. Scale is that ratio, and contrast of scale is the decision about how wide to open it.

Contrast of scale: one very large element against several small ones.

A two-page spread from Bodoni's specimen book. The left page is the title page, MANUALE TIPOGRAFICO set in widely spaced capitals inside a double rule. The right page, numbered 244, shows the capitals A to L at enormous size in a serif with hairline-thin horizontals and heavy vertical stems. — A spread from Bodoni's 1818 type specimen book, with giant capitals whose thin strokes are almost hairlines. That extreme thick and thin became a style of its own.Manuale Tipografico, specimen page. Giambattista Bodoni, published posthumously by Margherita Dall'Aglio, Parma, 1818.Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

Member

The rest of this is for members.

You have read the opening of this lesson. The rest of it comes with a membership.

One membership covers all four courses and Brands.

All lessons in the four Learn courses
All brand breakdowns in the Brands section
All quizzes, flashcards and crosswords
An AI teacher on every lesson, for up to 60 questions a day
All course material published during the membership

Price

Membership is from $12 a month on the Yearly plan, which is charged at $144 once a year. Lifetime access is $59, paid once.Membership is from ₹200 a month on the Yearly plan, which is charged at ₹2,400 + GST once a year. Lifetime access is ₹3,999 + GST, paid once.

See membership Already a member? Sign in

Check what stuck

Members only

You can't take this check yet.

Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

Question 1, locked
Which of these words means this? “Size read as a relationship to everything else in the frame, rather than as a measurement.”
- Objectivity
- Baseline grid
- Shelf view
- Scale
Question 2, locked
Which of these words means this? “The gap between the largest and smallest thing you have used. Too small a gap reads as an accident.”
- Contrast of scale
- Poster
- Golden ratio
- Scale
Question 3, locked
Which of these words means this? “Something in the picture whose real size the viewer already knows, which is what lets them judge everything else.”
- Rule of thirds
- Negative space
- Fold
- Size reference

Unlock the checks Already a member? Sign in

Elsewhere in the library