[MUSIC] In the previous video, I talked about why it's so important to establish visual hierarchy by making some visual elements more important than others, more dominant. But it's also important to know if we start making some elements so dominant that one part of the composition starts overpowering some other parts of the composition, we'll feel just looking at that that something feels wrong about the whole thing, about a composition. So, in other words, we need to make sure that whatever we do with the dominant elements, we always need to keep the composition balanced. Which means that if we add more dominance or more let's say visual weight on one side of the composition, then we need to compensate in some other way on the other side of the composition. Now if this looks or sounds familiar to you, that's because visual balance is actually works in the same way as a physical balance. So if we imagine a seesaw with two children of about the same weight, we can say that they are balanced because they have the same weight distributed at the same distance from the center. This equivalence of this sort of physical balance in a visual medium is called symmetry. So symmetry is such kind of visual balance or visual composition that we can see by applying or putting the same visual elements on the same distance from the center, what we call the central axis. In other words, symmetry feels like a mirrored image. On the other hand, if we take the same seesaw and place an adult which is much heavier on one side, then obviously we will see the seesaw is out of balance and so our visual compositions would be. So in the physical world, in order to compensate for this added weight, if we want to keep the seesaw balanced, we need to move the adult person closer to the axis. This is the same way that we will establish a visual balance between two uneven elements. And in a visual composition, we call this principle an asymmetry. So asymmetry is the way of achieving a visual balance between elements that do not have the same visual weight. But by using secondary principles such as the distance from the center or more color on one side or more intense shape on one side, and the bigger shape on the other side, we still conceive the balance. So symmetry and asymmetry is something that as designers actually you are most often work with almost all the time. And it's important to say that although these are both ways to establish a visual balance, that they have a different psychological effect on us. So symmetry, like the mirrored image, feels, how would I say? Feels like a very, very, very solid and stable composition. As the same way as in the physical world, symmetrical composition feels like there's no way to topple, and that's why symmetry transmits this feeling of persistence, of power, of stability. And that's why symmetry's been used throughout the ages to transmit these values, or these emotions to us. On the other hand, asymmetry always feels like an unstable balance. It feels like any moment that things could topple one way or another. And it's this tension that makes, I would say, asymmetry on one way visual interesting but also very often feels that things are just about to move. That's why asymmetry transmits us sort of a feel of movement and results in slightly or dramatically more dynamic composition. So symmetry and asymmetry, the things that as designers, you will use most. But these are not the only ways to establish the balance. There's a third way to establish balance, and it's called radial symmetry. And radial symmetry is basically arranging elements around the circle so they all point to the same focal points in the center. What we achieve by radial symmetry is a very, very strong focus on what's inside. That's why this sort of composition were often used for rituals from Stonehenge to, let's say, modern stadiums and music venues. Finally, the fourth way to achieve balance is through something called mosaic balance, which basically means that we have visual elements that are distributed all the way through the composition in the same way, so that they are like hierarchy. Now, as I said in the previous video, hierarchy is very important for perceiving architecture in one way. So as an architect, you probably won't be using mosaic symmetry very much, but if in some way you want to avoid hierarchy in order to express some certain feel of, let's say, ordered chaos, then mosaic symmetric is what you want to work with. In most other cases, you will use asymmetry or symmetry to balance your composition. [MUSIC]
