A Call for Unity (in Design)

Telling someone that a piece of artwork needs to look unified seems terribly obvious. However, a lack of unity is often the “I can’t quite put my finger on it” aspect of a piece that could use some improvement. But what exactly is unity when it comes to design?

Unity is the principle of attaining cohesion throughout the whole of a piece. Key to creating unity is establishing similarities which are really about finding points of commonality between the elements. In fact, as I discuss this, I’ll often use the term commonality instead of similarity because it’s that common connection that you’re really after.

(Above) Christine Dumont, creates commonality among her elements through an even, symmetrical design, restricted to only straight lines and right angles, and choosing equally bright colors on top and bottom. 

Unity in Review

We actually talked about the core of these concepts back in September as we wrapped up the discussion of color. Do remember these analogies about how we want to find the similarity and connection between things?

Our minds are always analyzing our world, weighing and judging all kinds of things our senses take in, but the mind works particularly hard to find connections between things, trying to divine a relationship between objects or concepts we encounter. When we can’t find the relationship or common connection between things that seem to belong together, it feels uncomfortable. Like, if you see two people sitting on a park bench in close proximity to each other, you assume they know each other. But if one is dressed in a business suit and the other is all punked out in black clothes and sports a mohawk, you may find it weird. The close proximity makes you think there should be a connection between them but their appearance makes a connection difficult to ascertain.

That particular paragraph pointed out the fact that proximity is not enough to make things look like they belong together. So just because you have a number of elements within the same frame or on the same form does not mean they’re going to look like they belong together. They have to have something in common.

That something might be visual such as a color, shape, texture, or pattern but it also might be conceptual. For instance, they could all may be related to a particular style, place, well-known story, or other subject matter. That comes up in the next recollected paragraph referring back to the two men on the park bench:

Now, if those same two people both had French bulldogs sitting at their feet you might assume that they are part of a French bulldog lover’s club. Or, if they have similar documents in hand then you might think that they are a businessman and a client going over paperwork. Once you find a connection, then the relationship makes sense even if the contrast between the two is odd. That contrast simply makes for an interesting combination but it’s not a wholly comfortable one until the viewer is able to divine a possible reason for them to be sitting together. We simply want things to make sense.

So, unity and similarity work together to help the viewer make sense of what they see. The most direct and often easiest ways to create similarities is to choose visual elements or characteristics of visual elements that support your intention and are used throughout the piece. For instance, lines that are predominantly curved, even if curved in different ways, would create commonality between those lines. Or if most of the elements were blocky or thick there would be commonality between that characteristic of your element’s forms.

But here’s the catch. You want commonality but you don’t want everything to be the same.

Similar but Not Boring

The concepts of unity and similarity are often discussed in tandem with variety and contrast. You really need to have both similarity and contrast to create unity and variety, and you need unity and variety to create a piece that is both cohesive and interesting. If you don’t, the work is likely to seem uncomfortable or boring or both.

That’s all I’m going to say about contrast and variety until the next lesson. It’s kind of a big subject. But keep in mind, you really can’t have a unifying piece without some variety so the objective is not to make everything look alike but to ensure the viewer can make connections between everything they see.

Seen here on the right, Carol Blackburn’s Odd Couple vessels employ visual unity in strong geometric shapes, well-defined lines, and consistently saturated colors. For all those points of commonality, this is anything but boring due to the high contrast in color, direction of elements, and variety of pattern.

Using Concepts to Create Unity

Are you starting to get the idea that unity is a tad more complicated than it might at first sound like? This is why using style, story, or other particular subject matters as the guiding or underlying concept for a piece (as long as it is related to or is the subject of your intention) is often a better way to go. These sources for your intentional choices are going to be inherently more complex and will always include points of similarity and contrast simply because they are rooted in the broadness of our ideas or experiences.

Style concepts you can use to guide your choices could be anything from a historically recognized aesthetic period such as Art Deco or Colonial, a modern trend such as minimalism or BoHo, or a subculture like goth or steampunk. It could even be a style of your own that you have developed after unearthing your own well-developed artistic voice.

Beatriz Cominatto created pieces inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people who lived on Brazil’s Marajo Island. An avid researcher and history lover, Beatriz studied archaeological finds from the island extensively before starting the series. The story of these people and their aesthetic inform all her design choices here, resulting in cohesive and intriguing piece.

The bottom line is you want all your elements to be seen as connected. That will create the unity and therefore the cohesiveness that makes a work feel masterfully complete. Whether you connect that through visual elements or connect your choices to particular concepts or subject matters, the important thing is that your viewer can see or sense why all of your chosen elements belong together.

My New Year Begins

After a particularly distracting week (for all of us, I know!) I am finally digging into the preparations for the “year of me” that I am planning, creatively speaking. I’m clearing space in the garage for some messier work involving glass and stone but I’m not so good at just quickly making space. I figure if I am reorganizing, I’m going to do it right. So I think I will be lost in there for whatever time I can manage for while yet. We never had the opportunity to really organize the space after he moved in four years ago so I’m using it as both a bit of downtime (yes, I know, only I would consider cleaning out a garage as downtime) and a literal and symbolic way to start this new chapter of my life off right.

I’m not sure when I will have work to show since my projects are rather ambitious and will take some time, but my fiction writing has work has already begun. I still have more research for the book to do but unlike the artwork, I’m impatient to get to the writing so I’m allowing myself time to work on short stories related to the novel’s characters. I cannot tell you how incredible it is to be working on creative projects that are not related to anything I’m trying to sell. Sure, I’ll try to sell the book the future but, for now, I am so enjoying getting lost in the writing.

I’m also working on an author website and I updated my artist website enough to allow cross promotion between the two. Luckily, my web guy is completely free right now to work on those for me and I get to pay him in trade, writing content for his clients so everything is just falling into place.

When websites, new writing, or new art is ready for prime time, I’ll let you all know.

I hope the start of your year and whatever you have planned is getting happily launched. I know we’re not out of the woods yet with the struggles we have had since early last year but I think we are starting to dig ourselves out. As long as 2020 doesn’t drag its trials and tribulations into 2021 too far. Last week wasn’t a great start but sometimes you have to go down to go up. Just hoping we don’t sink down much farther!

Please everyone stay safe, warm, healthy, kind, and positive!

You can support this blog by buying yourself a little something at Tenth Muse Arts or, if you like,  just …