Balance

 

As part of design elements and concepts, one of the key things that we learnt was 'Balance'. It is very important to have balance in everything we create - be it an image, digital art, fashion art etc. Before I learnt about balance as a design concept, I always thought balance meant symmetry. Now I know better that there are two types of balance we talk about - symmetrical and asymmetrical. 

What I used to think of as Balance is actually "Symmetrical Balance". The image above is in no ways showing symmetry but it looks balanced and I don't necessarily mean the actual balance shown in the image. Let me showcase this by one of the examples I created myself. Below is one of the images depicting symmetrical balance.

Symmetry means equality in 2 parts. Here I have tried to show vertical symmetry. Left half of the image is the mirror image of the right half. This shows symmetry which automatically also leads to balance in the image. Now the other kind of balance is bit more abstract concept - "Asymmetrical Balance". This means to create balance in the image even though there is no symmetry in what is presented. I have tried to take the similar elements I took above to depict asymmetrical balance below

In this image, there is no symmetry in the 2 halves. Number and size of candles/flames is different. But overall the image looks balanced, it does not look like too heavy on either of the sides. It is because I have tried to create that balance by having more candles of smaller size on one side vs lesser candles of bigger size on the other. The placement of the candles is also such that none of the parts of the image looks too crowded in comparison to any other part. This is what is meant by asymmetrical balance. Hope this has cleared up the concept of balance - symmetrical and asymmetrical for you as well as it has done for me.