THE BUILDING BLOCKs

What do we have to play with?
Everything in static design boils down to:
LINES have a single dimension: LENGTH.  They are the connection between 2 different end points.  In design, they can also have weight, or thickness, and be smooth, jagged, rough, curvy, dashed, or dotted.  

Lines connect things; lines separate things. Lines provide clarity; lines take us on journeys.  Letters (such as the thin type in our LINE picture here) are usually made of lines.  Lines can become something else, such as texture, if used in techniques like cross-hatching, for instance.  
SHAPE, in design, very specifically refers to 2D (two-dimensional) flat surface whose points of enclose the area they are defining.  All shapes have width (w) and height (h) - and you'll notice that all random shapes you make in a vector drawing program (such as Gravit, or Google Slides), that when you click on them, they're always defined by a rectangle, consisting of its width, and height.  

Shapes can be regular (squares, triangles, etc.) or irregular.  They can have clean clear borders or they can be more organic and life-like.  They can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, and any color or colors imaginable.  
FORM, in design, specifically refers to 3D (three-dimensional) objects, or the APPEARANCE of three-dimensionality on the page, since everything we'll work with in design is, technically, flat!  

FORM gives designs more life; it pulls it off the page, gives it more depth, makes it feel like you're looking at a scene you could step into, rather than just a flat surface.

Ways to create three-dimensionality might involve shading and perspective; or here seen as a drop-shadow in the blue "Form" sign; a reflection below the cube; 3D figures like the cube itself, which is simply three flat quadrangles placed together, with different shadings of bluish-green.  Finally, gradients of color can make a flat rectangle look like it has depth to it too, or turn a plain circle into an orbiting planet.
Some teachers of design refer to the area between all the shapes and lines and forms "negative space."  But I don't see anything negative about space!  It's everywhere: it's the background color, it's the stuff between.  
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How close or how far you put things, or where you place something on the page, makes all the difference in creating an effect.

Many logos, such as this one for a wildlife service, are actually created with space, rather than just shape and form.

TEXTURE

TEXTURE is how something feels, or might feel, physically: whether the surface is smooth or rough, scaly, sandy, furry, or any number of other treatments.  
Look closely, zoom in, and notice the details to the world around us: from tree bark, to sandy ground, to the hair on your head, texture is everywhere, again to give life and a touch of realism to your work.  
TEXTURE is more easily achieved with Raster Graphics programs: those that deal with photos and photographs, rather than the flatter drawings of Vector graphics.  For 3D programs, text is also an essential part of the art form, from hair and clothing to different kinds of alien skin.
COLOR consists of HUE, or the pure colors on the spectrum or color wheel; SATURATION, or the intensity of colors, and VALUE, the ranges of colors from light to dark.  We will consider VALUE as its own ELEMENT of DESIGN for a while, like it is in Art Class, for a while - until we really get into learning about color!  

Color conveys mood, feelings, emotions, atmospheres, symbolism, meaning, temperature, and just sheer power and beauty.  Colors can be loud or subtle; mixed or solitary; obvious or not at all; shades and tones and tints; linear or radial gradients; can be seen in lines as border colors, and in shapes as both fill color or border colors.

In raster images (like photographs), colors will subtly change over a series of pixels, and yet each pixel is only one very specific color.  

16 million specific, different colors are possible in the digital world, that can each be given a specific number, via several different color systems.  

VALUE: SHADING: lightness and darkness