Design Friday: The Elements and Principles of Design

Continuing with the idea of making design relevant in our own lives, I thought I'd take a break from the regular approach, and try to highlight the basic foundation of design, aka: the Elements and Principles of Design. (My main resource will be "Interiors: An Introduction" by Karla J. Nielson and David A. Taylor).
You might think you must have an innate ability to have good design sense, and if you weren't born with it you have no hope. I don't think that's necessarily true. An innate sense certainly helps, but I think with enough studying and practice, anybody can develop good design sense. Design shows are fun to watch, but not always helpful in educating (at least the ones I've seen). If you know and understand the elements and principles, hopefully it can give you a way to verbalize what you like, don't like, or what's missing.

Principles

• Scale
• Proportion
• Balance
• Rhythm
• Emphasis
• Harmony

Elements

• Space
• Shape
• Form
• Mass
• Line
• Texture
• Pattern
• Light
• Color
  

For the next 15 weeks, I'm going to take time each week to highlight each individual element or principle to help give a better understanding of what makes successful design. It'll be a good review for me anyway.

I hope I haven't bit off more than I can chew!