7 Elements of Design

Glad you asked ... look at any drawing, painting, sculpture or design. The visual parts that make up the artwork are known as the elements of design.

We can identify any one of the seven different elements of design in a work of art individually. For example, when we look at a drawing and see a bold line used to outline the subject, we can say - this artwork uses the element of line.

But what's even more interesting is that elements of design can combine in a work of art to create a visual effect. That's because the seven elements of design have a relationship to one another. Let's use an example: imagine that you see a group of lines being used in an artwork and that in places these lines cross over each other forming the element of shape. Now, imagine that the shapes in the image are filled with value and rendered in such a way to appear as a rough surface texture.

If we think about the example above, we can say that the artwork contains line, shape, value, and texture as individual elements of design. But we also see these different elements combining and working together to create the overall image in the artwork.

The individual elements of design can also be used by artists in an interesting way. Artists often choose to stress the unique character of a single element as a technique to achieve an effect. Let's take, for example, a painting that features the colour red because the artist used to express an emotion like anger or danger to the viewer. We can say that the dominant element of design is colour since it dominates the overall artwork and creates such a strong effect in the viewer.