Visual Composition

Roles: figure, ground, positive-space, negative-space, balance, proportion, focal-point, framing, contrast, rhythm

The arrangement of visual elements within a defined area — what is placed where, what is left empty, what draws the eye and what recedes. As a source domain, visual composition provides a spatial logic for any situation where what is absent or surrounding matters as much as what is present: the silence between notes, the white space on a page, the features a product omits. The frame’s power comes from its figure-ground structure, which forces attention to relationships between presence and absence rather than to elements in isolation.

As Source Frame (1)