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Job No:11-22360 Title:RP-Language of Graphic Design
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3130
(Text)
shape
3
From ancient glyphs to
contemporary symbols,
shape is one of the fun-
damental elements of
a graphic designer’s vocabulary. Generally, shape is defined by
boundary and mass. It refers to a contour or an outline of a form.
A plane or shape is a point or dot that has become too large to
“The object of art is to give life a shape.”
Jean anouilh (1910–1987), French, Dramatist
shape \'sha
¬
p\ n
1: spatial form or contour,
or the characteristic surface
configuration of a thing; an outline
or a contour; see form
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Job No:11-22360 Title:RP-Language of Graphic Design
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Job No:11-22360 Title:RP-Language of Graphic Design
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(Text)
1928
The Sold Appetite
Moscow, Russia
Vladimir Stenberg (1899–1982) and
Georgii Stenberg (1900–1933), also
known as the Stenberg brothers, were
Soviet artists and designers who came to
renown following the Russian Revolution
of 1917.
After an initial interest in engineer-
ing, the Stenbergs attended the Stoganov
School of Applied Art (later renamed the
State Free Art Workshops) in Moscow
from 1917 to 1922, where they designed
the decorations and posters for the first
May Day celebration of 1918. In 1919, the
Stenbergs along with a group of comrades
founded the obmokhu (the Society of Young
Artists) and participated in its first group
exhibition in May of 1919. During the 1920s
and ’30s, they were well established and
members of the avant-garde community,
collaborating with other artists, architects,
and writers such as Alexandr Rodchenko,
Varvara Stepnova, and Kasimir Malevich.
They worked in a wide range of me-
dia, initially as sculptors and then as
theater designers, architects, and drafts-
men, designing everything from clothing
and furniture to costumes and stage sets.
However, their greatest achievement was
in graphic design, particularly with the
design of mass-produced posters used to
advertise a new and powerful form of uni-
versal communication—film.
In the early 1900s, the commercial film
poster provided artists and designers, such
as the Stenbergs, with new and uncharted
approaches for communicating a diverse
range of visual themes. Up to this point
in time, film posters usually relied upon
a narrow point of view for communicating
their story—either a single scene from the
film or an image of the featured star of the
film—to gain the public’s attention.
retain its pure identity due to its weight or
mass, even if it still has a flat appearance.
When this transformation occurs, a dot
becomes a shape.
A shape is a graphic, two-dimensional
plane that appears to be flat and is defined
by an enclosing, contour line, as well as by
color, value, texture, or typography. It is the
external outline of a plane that results from
a line that starts at one point and continues
back to its beginning, creating an enclosed
space or shape. It is composed of width
and height but never depth. It is a line with
breadth. Shapes are used to define layouts,
create patterns, and compose countless ele-
ments in a composition.
Basic Characteristics
Examples of basic shapes are the circle,
square, and triangle. All other complex
shapes, such as an oval, rectangle, trapezoid,
pentagon, hexagon, and octagon, are de-
rived from these three elemental shapes.
A shape can be solid or outline, opaque or
transparent, smooth or textured.
Basically, shapes are either geometric,
organic, or random. Their overall configura-
(continued on page 34)
Pentagram
New York, New York, USA
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