Apologies for linking to a lot of Christopher Butler recently, but I really love his thinking about design. This time, Butler reminds us about the importance of structure and how the proto-graphic designers we studied in art history, like Piet Mondrian, mastered it.
A well-composed photograph communicates something essential even before we register its subject. A thoughtfully designed page layout feels right before we read a single word. There’s something happening in that first moment of perception that transcends the individual elements being composed.
My favorite passage in his essay begins here:
Perhaps we “read” composition the way we read text — our brains processing visual structure as a kind of fundamental grammar that exists beneath conscious recognition. Just as we don’t typically think about parsing sentences into subjects and predicates while reading, we don’t consciously deconstruct the golden ratio or rule of thirds while looking at an image. Yet in both cases, our minds are translating structure into meaning.
The next eight short paragraphs build on this idea and crescendo with this banger:
In recognizing composition as this fundamental visual language, we begin to understand why good design works at such a deep level. It’s not just about making things look nice — it’s about speaking fluently in a language that predates words, tapping into patterns of perception that feel as natural as breathing.
Composition is a fundamental visual language. I had never thought of it that way and yet it feels right.
The whole thing is great. Please go read it.
The Art Secret Behind All Great Design
When I was a young child, I would often pull books off of my father’s shelf and stare at their pages. In a clip from a 1987 home video that has
chrbutler.com