Matakuliah
Tahun
: U0254 / Desain Komunikasi Visual I
: 2005
Basic Shapes, Signage Problems
Pertemuan 3-4
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Basic Shapes
• Geometry, (square, circle, triangle)
often used in the design of signage
and corporate identity.
• Geometry,
introduces designers to the process of
creating a reductive language for
visual communication.
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/designelements/a/shapesintro.htm
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Basic Shapes
• Circle, Square, Triangle
The basic shapes are crucial to
mysticism and to magic. Shapes are
perhaps even more fundamental in our
understanding of universe than
numbers. They describe spatial
relationships, usually between things at
particular points in space.
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Circle
• The circle is an almost universal symbol of
harmony and wholeness. While fractal
geometers such as Benoit Mandelbrot can
point out that "mountains are not cones"
and "rivers are not straight lines," some of
the basic shapes have been discovered
and used as sacred symbols by cultures
the world over.
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Circle
The fact that we find this symbol not only
in European designs but in pre-Columbian
American designs as well, often with a
cross in the center, indicates that it creates
some sort of resonance in the mind. It is
aesthetically pleasing and relatively simple
to construct.
http://members.aol.com/AJRoberti/math/shapes1.htm
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Circle
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Square
• The square, because of its fourfold
symmetry, and its six-sided threedimensional expansion the cube, is a
universal representation of created order,
or multiplicity of form.
• A square or rectangular structure needs
supports to hold it up, hence the origin of
the pillar or column as a symbol of
preservation and continuance.
http://members.aol.com/AJRoberti/math/shapes1.htm
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Square-Rectangle
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Triangle
• The circle and square are somehow "static," one
representing underlying or abstract reality while the
other represents manifest form in its final state. The
triangle though represents the process, the verb, the
way one thing becomes another. This notion of the
triangle as dynamic seems to be just as primal.
• The triangle's angles are "sharp" enough to indicate
a lack of inertia; it must always "point" in some
direction. In magic and some mystical traditions,
triangles pointing up represent fire, as this is
suggestive of fire's upward motion; triangles pointing
down represent water, as this is suggestive of the
cup or vessel.
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Triangle
• Bucky Fuller attempted to see Universe through
a child's eyes, and what he came away with is
the notion of the triangle, rather than the square,
as the fundamental shape of nature. He based
this on a personal form of vector geometry,
where a line is not a static line but representative
of energy. Thus the stability of the triangle, and
the shapes based on it (tetrahedron,
octahedron, icosahedrons) is a stability of
dynamic forces pushing against one another,
restricting each other's movement, cooperating
to make more.
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Triangle
• Claude Levi-Strauss used the triangle as a
symbol of process as well, by positing a
dialectic duality represented by two
opposites (like, say, raw and baked) and a
third position which represents something
in between, a composite
http://members.aol.com/AJRoberti/math/shapes1.htm
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Triangle
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