Balance is not symmetry. It is the tension between collapse and coherence. Therefore, it is the opposite of stillness. To speak of balance is to invoke the condition of something being held and not to be fixed. No conclusion but an ongoing relation. A weight here presupposes a counter there, even if that counter is nothing but the absence of its here with reversed signs. Balance does not eliminate difference; it activates it, arranges it, gives it place. Balance is the tension needed to neither explode or implode. What arises when intention meets the accidental and neither is abolished. In bodies, in breaths, in the temporality and modalities of being, balance appears as that which is always about to shift. As in thought: a phrase balanced on its referent, meaning slipping just out of reach, suspended between the known and the not-yet. Balance is the architecture of instability—made durable through time.

Balance is not a matter of equality but of energy. Layouts can be balanced or not, regardless of whether they are symmetrical or asymmetrical. A sculpture can teeter and still rest. Our task is not to enforce equilibrium, but to find the point where the space begins to breathe. Balance resides in contrast: between forms, weights, tones, tensions. It is noticed before it is seen, known before it is measured. A poster calming your eye without quieting it, a painting’s tension resolves in stillness. Balance is never imposed. It emerges through attention and waiver. Balance is not the absence of friction, but its distribution. Balance follows form, forms form, follows content, content which is shaping form, form flowing into form, unintentionally intentional. Balance follows the missing guide. A choreography holding it all together without ever being the center.

Its presence is characterised by a constant fluctuation between the general and the specific: At the level of the system, the medium, the artboard, the sentence, the line, word, glyph, bar, loop or ear. Letters balance their inner space with the weight of their strokes: the bowl of an “a”, the counter of an “e”, the mouth of a “C”. The left side shouldn’t overstate, the right shouldn’t fall away. On a page, balance occurs across the line: x-height against ascender height, text weight against leading, headline mass against white space. In multi-weight families, balance becomes structural. How does a bold relate to its regular? How does balance persist across axes? Balance champions accuracy over precision. It is about what we see, not what we measure. And the eye likes balance, not boredom. Balance is invitation. The reader enters because the page holds.