What is Shape?
Shape, from the perspective of Writing Studies, is
- a design element that can be used in texts/compositions for rhetorical purposes
- a tool, a method of signification
- a geometric shape, such as a wave, circle, oval, triangular.
Related Concepts: Data Visualization; Gestalt, Gestalt Theory; Semiotics; Space; Visual Language
Shape is the structure of content.
As humans, we draw on our remarkable pattern-recognition competencies to interpret signs.
In a blink, somehow, we capture the whole, the gestalt. And to capture the whole, to understand a message or to compose a reader-based text, we use shapes:
- the shape of letter in alphabets
- the shape of a line and its direction
- the shape of the anthropocene
- the shape of the planet, the universe