Welcome

Before reading a single word of a document, the eye has already decided whether it is clear or confusing. This course explains how it decides and teaches you to compose in favour of that decision.

What you will find

• Block 1. How we see: the laws of Gestalt. Before reading, the eye has already organised what it sees. You learn the laws by which it groups, completes and separates —proximity, similarity, closure, continuity, figure and ground, symmetry and common fate— and how to use them in your favour when you compose.
• Block 2. Principles of composition: proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast and white space. Five principles are enough to organise any page: proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast and white space. You learn to apply them one by one to office documents and to resist horror vacui, the urge to fill everything in.
• Block 3. The psychology of form: circles, squares, triangles and lines. What each form tends to communicate —circle, square, triangle and lines— and why, applied to the logo. With their limits: colour, lettering and context qualify any form, and the choice is checked with another person.
• Block 4. From analysis to practice: critique and compose. A five-step method for critiquing any piece with the vocabulary of the course and a procedure for composing your own —slide, poster, document or invoice—, with the most frequent mistakes and a final checklist.

How you will work

Each lesson opens with a short introduction and, below it, several pills: short pieces that explain a single idea and end with a case or something to do. Read them in order the first time; afterwards you can go back to the one you need.

Where you see an interactive practice, do it before reading on: it is there for you to decide, calculate or classify, and the explanation comes afterwards. It does not save what you write, so copy whatever you want to keep.

Each block ends with an exam of six questions. All the answers come with a comment, including the wrong ones: failing and reading why is part of the method.

At The Singular Academy you learn by solving real cases. If at the end of a lesson you do not know what you would do differently tomorrow, go back over it.