Design Nomenclature / Composition
Gradation
Also called progression, graduation, progressive rhythm
Change 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.
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.
- GradientA continuous interpolation between two or more colors across a region, evaluated per pixel. What it looks like depends entirely on the space it is interpolated in: the same two endpoints pass through a dead grey middle in sRGB, hold their chroma in Oklab, and sweep the long way round the wheel in a polar space.