Hello! Ashli Oliver here with the next installment in our No More Floating Flair mini-series. If you missed the previous posts, you can find them here:
Series Intro & Grounding with an Existing Pattern
Alrighty! Now that we are all on the same page, it is time to talk "Tension."
As in:
How to Effectively Float Your Flair Using Tension
Wait. What? There should be no stress in scrapbooking, right? Right! The tension I speak of is a mysterious design principle - most often talked about in relation to Graphic Design. However, it relates to all sorts of design and when used properly it will let us float our flair - in a GOOD way!
Sound confusing? Let me try to explain...
Without going on and on about the fundamentals of design, we can simply say:
- Tension is the energy or balance created between opposing forces or elements.
"Well, that's just fabulous, Ashli. How on earth does that relate to my scrapbooking?!?!"
I'm so glad you asked.
You see, when visual tension is effectively achieved, an object can float in space as it will essentially be "grounded" by it's opposing element.
Let's take a look!
Here I have a layout that is a little more than half way complete. I have started to embellish, but I need a bit more and want to get some Flair in there!
First, I give this a try. Not bad. The "Home" flair, from the Home Sweet Home Flair Set, is sitting just above and to the right of my title area. However, the tension we are getting here isn't an interesting and pleasing tension. Why? The two elements are competing. The flair is a word and so is the title element. Not to mention, they are the same color palette. No new color has been introduced. In effect - the eye doesn't know which element to look at first. Competition instead of tension. That's not what we want!
Here we have a more colorful piece of flair resting on our larger circle embellishment. Hmmmm... that's not the best either. It's getting lost in there and there is no interesting tension created...
OK - what about this? The aforementioned white flair is just above and to the left of our large blue circle, while a couple of other pieces are back over in our title area. I think we are getting there, however... the two flair buttons by the title are still in competition with our "mr." and when the page is looked at as one whole design, the eye sees all four circles. And, we have learned from our previous lessons, that three is a much better crowd, especially when trying to ground things...
So, that brings me to this! Our white "Home" badge is placed close enough to the blue circle that it obviously has a relationship, but is not too far away as to cause visual competition. Our lovely white "Home" flair does indeed work here as it is far enough away from the title that the words no longer compete and it provides a nice contrast to the color of the large circle.
That, my friends, is tension! YAY! To further emphasize this, I simple added two rhinestones in a similar fashion... close, but not too far away from one another:
Now, would this work if that larger embellishment was a different shape? Certainly! The key is to have one element noticeably larger than the other. The contrast of size helps to achieve the proper grounding in the tension of the objects. The main thing to remember is that the elements need to be close enough to one another that they are obviously related.
And there we have it! Embellishments finished, title complete, and journaling added:Let's Recap:
- Visual tension is balance created by two opposing elements.
- The two elements need to compliment one another, not compete.
- Pay close attention to contrasting sizes. The larger object will give your smaller object a sense of belonging.
I do hope this has inspired you to try a little visual tension of your own!
We would love to see what you make. Remember to use the hashtag #NoMoreFloatingFlair when sharing on social media. And, as always, if you have any questions feel free to leave us a note in the comments.
I look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks when we will look at something a little simpler... Working Flair Into a Border!
