Everything in the world is made up of points, lines, and planes. These compositional elements are the building blocks of every image and design choice. We design things with specific points to draw our eyes towards those focal points.

The Amazon echo has multiple points of focus – Photo Matt Behnen Aug. 2018

This Amazon echo was designed with four specific points for people to focus on. These points are placed there for our eyes to focus on and understand that they are important for what we are looking at. Our eyes will be pulled towards those points before looking at anything else on the device. Points can be bold and obvious like the four big buttons or small and discreet like the tiny microphone holes surrounding the border of the device.

The Hoover Dam is made of multiple lines connecting together – Photo Matt Behnen Dec. 2017

Multiple points following a direction create a line. Points can also be so close together that you can no longer see them as individual points but as a single line. This image shows lines very well because a line is the connection of two points and you can clearly see the points of intersection where two lines meet. There is also the empty space between each line. The empty space is also knows as planes because a line is where two planes meet. Lines and planes complement each other.

Planes are shown by the connecting lines and points – Photo Matt Behnen Aug. 2018

Planes are created by the combination of points and lines coming together. An easy way to think of a plane is the shape made from lines connection points. You can think of planes as shapes. This picture of windows shows how planes are created by multiple lines connecting and creating a shape in the window. Planes are flat surfaces that extends itself in height and width.

Scale plays a big part in design. When creating an image in illustrator, you can make a single point on your artwork, but if you decide to make that point larger in scale, it will become a plane. The same explanation can work with lines. the thicker you make a line, some people will see that as a line, but others will see that as an individual shape and it becomes a plane.