Design Principles

A rangoli is never a list of motifs. Between the vocabulary — dots, lines, petals, borders — and the finished design stands a set of quiet decisions: what dominates and what supports, where density gives way to open ground, how a frame closes the composition without caging it. This chapter describes those decisions — the grammar that turns elements into compositions. Its essays read the tradition at the design lens: the element alphabet and the relationships that give it meaning; the colour method and the jobs each colour does; the border, the frame that completes; and the planning that composes them all into one whole. Named principles will gain entries of their own as their terms complete the vocabulary lifecycle.