Design Nomenclature / Composition
Rhythm
Also called visual rhythm, alternation, cadence
- Composition
- Type
- 2D & 3D
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.