Key principles of design - Elements and Principles of Design - page 43

Unity - Variety
The presence of commonality among elements within a design can contribute to a sense of
unity. Unity can also be achieved by including a unifying factor such as colour, shape or line;
while Variety is achieved by strategically varying elements of design.
Despite numerous photographs in the poster for Bill Cunningham, New York (2010), there is
a strong level of visual cohesion due to the similarity of shape and style of the images and the
strong use of white. This technique also features in the poster for Love, Actually (2003) with
the use of red creating as sense of unity despite the variety of different images in the poster.
Figure 44. Similarity of shape, size or colour conveys visual unity.
Similarity of hue is used as a unifying factor in the film posters for Contagion (2011) and
Sherlock Holmes (2009), the latter of which features a consistent blue wash.