3 shape
“The object of art is to give life a shape.”
JEAN ANOUILH (FRENCH, 1910–1987) Dramatist
shape \'shāp\ n
1: spatial form or contour, or the characteristic surface configuration of a thing; an outline or a contour; see form
From ancient glyphs to contemporary symbols, shape is one of the fundamental 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 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 elements in a composition.
The playful and unconventional shapes for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) identity program are reminiscent of forms evident in the building’s original interior architecture, and represent the museum’s unique home, expanded collections, and diverse program offerings. A broad and visually diverse set of colors, textures, materials, forms, and images allows the museum’s acronym to constantly evolve and change from application to application, furthering the eclectic nature and public message of this institution’s mission.
PENTAGRAM
New York, NY, USA
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 derived from these three elemental shapes. A shape can be solid or outline, opaque or transparent, smooth or textured.
Shapes are either geometric, organic, or random. Their overall configurations can determine their inherent message and meaning. For example, a soft, curvilinear shape may appear warm and welcoming, whereas a sharp, angular shape may appear cold and threatening.
Straight lines and angular corners create rectilinear, geometric shapes. Curvilinear lines create amorphous, organic shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles are geometric shapes that are crisp and mathematically precise with straight lines and consistent, curved profiles. A natural or organic shape can either be irregular or regular.
1928
The Sold Appetite Poster
VLADIMIR AND GEORGII STENBERG (STENBERG BROTHERS)
Moscow, RUS
The Stenberg Brothers and the Russian Avant-Garde Film Poster
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 engineering, 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 Russian artists, architects, and writers such as Alexandr Rodchenko (1891–1956), Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), and Kasimir Malevich (1878–1935).
They worked in a wide range of media, initially as sculptors and then as theater designers, architects, and draftsmen, 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 universal 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 public attention.
The Stenbergs were at their prime during this revolutionary period of politics, propaganda, and artistic experimentation in Russia. They started to experiment with collage, photomontage, and assemblage, as well as portions of photographic images and preprinted paper created by others. They realized a new approach and methodology for creating imagery and compositions that were no longer connected to conventional realism.
While the visual characteristics of their posters included perspective, texture, scale, contrast, and movement, as well as an innovative use of color, pattern, and typography, shape was a primary compositional element used in all of their work. Whether its scale is exaggerated, its graphic form distorted, or its visual composition jarring, shape, when used by the Stenbergs, created identity and visual immediacy, as well as reinforced a poster’s story. Their posters were groundbreaking, abstract studies of line, plane, and shape composed in space and reflected a kinship to Suprematist painting, Russian Constructivism, and the work of El Lissitzky (1890–1941), Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), and Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944).
The majority of their posters, radical even by contemporary standards, were produced within a nine-year period from 1924 to 1933, the year of Georgii’s untimely death at age 33. Vladimir continued to design film posters and organized the decorations of Moscow’s Red Square for the May Day celebration of 1947.
The soft inviting shape of this four-sided wine label for Terrazzo Prosecco provides an appropriate frame and background for its delicate, linear border, as well as for its symmetrical typography and fluid script lettering of the wine name.
LOUISE FILI LTD.
New York, NY, USA
The pairing of these two pure geometric shapes provides a strong visual counterpoint for this identity for the University of Kentucky’s Arts in HealthCare program. The dynamic juxtaposition of these shapes fully depends upon the visual clarity of the square representing the institution, combined with the imperfect dots of the concentric circles symbolizing the human connection of the visual and performing artists represented in this program.
POULIN + MORRIS INC.
New York, NY, USA
Three thick, sturdy, and bold custom letterforms are composed as one shape to communicate the strength and power of New York City’s branding and identity program. Used alone or collectively as a visual texture and pattern, this unique mark is designed as one continuous shape, organized in a variety of compositional configurations. Because of the shape of this logotype, it is immediately understood as three separate and distinct letterforms with an unmistakable visual characteristic that is durable, forceful, and strong.
WOLFF OLINS
New York, NY, USA
A bold, six-sided, vertically proportioned shape functions as a distinctive frame and containment for logotype of Darden Studio, a type foundry housed in a historic building in downtown Brooklyn, New York. Framed on a black field and outlined with a white hairline, this shape communicating a strong sense of craft and artismanship in the studio’s aesthetic, is rooted in centuries of type founding, and reminiscent of historical board and flag signs found in the area.
MUCCA DESIGN
New York, NY, USA
This poster series for the Cleveland International Film Festival relies upon unusual, random, free-form shapes representing the festival’s attendees. Overscale, bold, black shapes set against vibrant color backgrounds strengthen the overall identity of these memorable and eye-catching profiles. They are further married with smaller dynamic shapes containing typographic information and visual textures for added nuance and character.
TWIST CREATIVE INC.
Cleveland, OH, USA
The stylized, machinelike, curved shape of this M letterform represents Mac Industries, a precision machining and fabrication company. This is further conveyed with a corner of the M separated and set apart from the body of the letter functioning as a dotted i. This dynamic void creates a visual intersection within the stylized shape of the letterform, reinforcing a level of detail and precision in the firm’s identity and secondary descriptive line.
INFINITE SCALE DESIGN
Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Categories of Shape
There are three categories of shape, each with its own unique visual characteristics and criteria:
Geometric
The most recognizable shapes are geometric: circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. They are based on mathematical formulas relating to point, line, and plane. Their contours are always regularized, angular, or hard edged. We are most familiar with geometric shapes because they are the first shapes we tend to encounter when we are small children.
Organic
Shapes created or derived from nature and living organisms are organic. These shapes, used more freely than geometric shapes, are usually irregular and soft.
Random
Shapes created from invention and imagination are random and have no sense of order, semblance, or relationship to geometric or organic shapes.
The amorphous, free-form shape of a stylized window, projected back in space and framed with soft corners, symbolizes a youthful appeal for this Seattle-based boutique realtor named Funky Lofts.
URBAN INFLUENCE DESIGN STUDIO
Seattle, WA, USA
The fluid black profile of the letter T and star ligature combined with the purity of the circular seal for this identity program creates a strong visual integrity. The counterpoint between an organic and geometric-based shape become one and the same with the firm name of Thomas & Star.
MARKATOS MOORE
San Francisco, CA, USA
These letterforms are unconventional not only in their shape, but also in their subtle variations in profile, proportion, counter, and stroke thickness. Reinforced with nonalignment to a common baseline and a pronounced dot over the letter i, the active and lyrical typographic statement is unique and memorable. Color is also used as an alternating, pulsating visual element to further unify the varying shapes and meaning of the logotype.
WINK
Minneapolis, MN, USA
The visual strength, immediacy, and simplicity of a pure geometric-shaped letterform is the central focal point and singular message of this lecture-series poster. A large-scale, sans serif, white C centered within the vertical composition of this poster and contrasted against a dramatic black background further reinforces the purity and beauty of this geometric shape, as well as the design philosophy and career of the designer, Ivan Chermayeff (American, 1932–2017).
PISCATELLO DESIGN CENTER
New York, NY, USA
Shape versus Form
The terms shape and form are commonly used interchangeably; however, they have two separate and distinct meanings. A shape has a two-dimensional character, whereas a form is perceived to have a three-dimensional character. Other terms commonly used for form are mass and volume.
A form, mass, or volume is a three-dimensional shape because it has height, width, and depth.
In compositional terms, a shape functions as a figurative element in or on a ground, surrounding background, or space. It is a positive element within a negative space. This is a fundamental principle of figure-ground and an integral characteristic of balance in a visual composition.
The traditional, cruciform shape of this symmetrical medallion is derived from ornamental architectural features of the Old Police Headquarters building in downtown San Diego, a renovated, mixed-use real estate development.
URBAN INFLUENCE DESIGN STUDIO
Seattle, WA, USA
This promotional poster was part of a series that was developed by Scholastic, Target, and AIGA to help educators introduce design to their K–8 curriculums. The pro-bono project invited designers to “respond” to an art piece by creating a poster that celebrates its themes or formal elements. The dual nature of Picasso’s painted terra-cotta piece titled Vase-Bird inspired the random, half animal, half object, and hybrid shapes evident in this poster. These playful, whimsical letterforms are further strengthened by an intense two-color palette, a strong figure–ground relationship, and an unusual overall texture that is engaging to the viewer.
ALFALFA STUDIO LLC
New York, NY, USA