OUGD404
Studio Brief 01 
Content Research

I've decided to pick contrast to base my design principles publications of, but in particular contrasting shapes in graphic design. After learning about each principle in study tasks and lecturers, I think contrast interested me the most but I wanted to focus on a specific type of contrast,shape. In my own practice I've realised I commonly use subtle shapes to solve problems and use the simplicity of shapes to my advantage, so I believe I'll enjoy basing my work of contrasting shapes. I started researching contrast in graphic design, then from that point I found extracts on 'shape', so for the content I reworded a majority of the text content to be suitable for my design principles publication.

The chosen content:

Distinguishing by comparing / creating differences. Some ways of creating contrast among elements in  design include using contrasting colors, sizes, shapes, locations, or relationships. In this publication I'll be focusing on contrasting shapes.

A shape is an area that is contained within an implied line, or is seen and identified because of colour or value changes.

Shape contrast means making things notable in by their difference in physical shape compared to other things on a page. At a basic level this can used in things like adding rounded corners to a button, but taken to more extreme levels it can attract attention. 

Applying contrast in shape for any design can really help make things start out. It can allow to make things stand out. It can allow you to make the principal elements of your design stand out by creating noticeable difference in shape compared to the rest of the elements in the layout. Depending on how far you take this, you can create a very extreme level of contrast to attract attention to an area. For instance, if you have a layout where all the elements are made up of rectangles but right in the middle there's a circle, the viewers attention is going to go directly to the circle because its different to the rest of the elements.