2. Dot

We are constantly exposed to dots when we watch television. The television picture comprises of 40 thousand tiny dots that are used to stabilise the image we watch each day. New Impressionists or pointillist painters used the perceptual concept of retinal infusion. The hues and values produced in these paintings are extraordinary.

The 'bindu', in more universally accepted parlance, is the point. The most rudimentary element of design, it is dimensionless and it openly marks a position in space. Though in itself a visually appealing element, it is too small for sustained aesthetic interest, and is thus almost always seen in combination with other elements, with other points, lines and shapes.

A true colour output is obtained by remixing and separation of the dots of the four basic colours in any picture. Primitive societies also favoured point designs - in textiles and paintings, sculptures and jewellery, and even for decorating the human body with the art of tattoo.

Whereas a point in itself may be of little importance, it gains significance when it participates in a design. The thesaurus offers 11 meanings for the word 'point', two of which, seem relevant to this discussion. One is 'an item that goes to make up the whole' and the other is 'a non-curving, geometrical object unbounded in one, two, three or more dimensions.'