Design Nomenclature / Composition
Rhythm
Also called visual rhythm, alternation, cadence
- Composition
- Type
- 2D & 3D
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
Recurrence at intervals the eye can feel. Regular rhythm repeats one interval, alternating rhythm swaps between two, progressive rhythm changes the interval by a rule. What is felt is the interval, not the element — which is why spacing carries rhythm and ornament does not.
In practice
In typesetting, 'rhythm' almost always means vertical rhythm — a consistent leading increment down the page — rather than the general principle.
Not to be confused with
- RepetitionThe reuse of an element across a composition or a body of work. Repetition builds unity and lets a reader stop re-decoding what they have already decoded. It produces rhythm only when the intervals between instances are themselves regular; without interval it is inventory, not rhythm.
- GradationChange applied by a rule across a sequence — size, value, spacing, or weight stepping in a consistent progression. Gradation gives direction: the eye runs down the ramp from large to small. Where repetition holds still and rhythm oscillates, gradation goes somewhere and arrives.