Paramore album art. “50 years of typography in album covers” – click here for source.

This is an old Paramore album cover. The white space, or negative space, registers as the background. The figure is the black text scattered around, but the main figure is the orange “Riot!” because that’s the first place the viewers eye reaches. If it weren’t for the one piece of orange type, this piece would seem far too chaotic, but the orange brings that type to the foreground pushing the chaotic back and therefore minimizing it. This creates a stable figure/ground relationship. However, this piece does have a lot of tension between the black and white space.

  This piece has no margin. Arguably, the orange “Riot!” is framed by the rest of the piece, but the over all composition does not have a frame. 

This piece is asymmetrically balanced being slightly top-heavy due to the orange “Riot!” The multiple bold “Riot!’s” work as points because they don’t guide the viewer’s eye in any which way. A few of the strings of words may work as lines, but there aren’t many that actually direct the viewer’s eye.

If I were to change one thing about this composition, it would be to make the “Paramore” in orange as well. This would create a more symmetrically balanced composition while currently the “Paramore” gets lost in the chaos.