Dominance and Contrast in Design

Design 1:
At the first look we see the women face in the middle of this design work. It can be explained with the face's being the biggest element in the design and being in the center. Also it has the white color whereas  the rest of the design has darker texures or black color. This contrast of texture and color and the face's attractive larger shape makes it the dominant object in the design. We can also see the good continuation of the other elements moving throught the circle's borders. Since most of the design work is darker textured, we can consider these continuing white elements as the sub-dominants. They are second to be seen after the dominant and leading us inside of the desing and letting us notice the sub-ordinates, which are the darker textured floathing elements. In checked textured elements there is an other interesting example of contrast. Not being as strong as the white side elements, by using figure/ground organisation they are also helping us to notice the sub-ordinates, so we can give them a roll between sub-dominant and sub-ordinate.

Design 2:
In this design work, the designer used color contrast to distinguish the units. Using the lighter and darker tones in an order gives the design a three dimensional debt. Having brighter tones in the upper side of the page shows that the light comes from somewhere above the page.
Using of bright red and white near dark toned subtractive cube in the middle pretends as a "white spaces" and gives the cube the heaviest visual weight in the design. The darker gray-black prisims on the top also helped this contrast to be stronger. What makes the contrast between the cube and prisims is aproximity of diffrent leveled prisms having a strong density of white tone on their top. Using dark blue tones with the brighther red tones makes blue more perceivable and attension drawer so that the bottom part of the design survives from being insignificant. Also in the back ground, there is a fact of getting darker colored while moving downwords. This also creates a contrast and balance in general of the design.


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Design1 from: http://portfolios.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/gallery/23384557/2D-Design-Works
Design 2 from: http://luizatanaka.com/finearts/fzlw0l5hodlcqc4qx08ut3h0ghudni