Visual Design is a hug topic, at the beggining of this topic I would like to start talking about the basic principels of visual design while, slowly making my way to the more complicated topics. So, What are the ...
These are the most basic building blocks of any design, no matter what it is. With these you can create anything you want, from simple icons to very complex illustrations, everything is made with the combination of these simple elements.
In geometry a point is a combination of x and y coordinates, add a z axis and you’re in 3D, but let's stick with 2 dimensions for now.
If you connect two points you'll get a line. A line that is formed by an immensity of points, a bit like a bunch of atoms form molecules which, in turn, form all the objects around you. Then, if you add a third point and connect them all you have a shape, in this case a triangle, but as mentioned before you can use this basic elements to achieve pretty much anything that you want.
Now, to your eyes these shapes don't really exist until you add something to it…
The human eye can see over 10 million different colours from red to violet, and from young age all of us learn to attribute certain values or meanings to specific colours.
Imagine the traffic lights for instance. They’re just colours but we learn that red means stop, green means go and yellow means step on the metal because you can make it before it turns red. This to say that we take very different actions just based on a colour, sometimes even without thinking about it.
In my opinion this happens simply because we learn these things, not because a colour has an intrinsic meaning attached to it. This is more true if you consider that these meanings will change depending on your culture, where and when you were raised.