The Complete Guide to 17 Key Principles of Design and How They Can Help You Create a Compelling Design Today Medium
Table Of Content
Imagine you are depicting a city scene and wish to place emphasis on the height of a specific skyscraper. If your skyscraper is surrounded by other buildings of similar size and proportion, it is not distinguished from the other elements in the composition. If, however, your skyscraper is surrounded by single-story ranch-style homes, the contrast of shape and size will place emphasis on the skyscraper. These design basics will help to build your art vocabulary and provide a common language to examine these concepts on your own. Note that many of these design principles are interrelated, so developing your skill in one principle will build and strengthen your understanding of other principles. Creative professionals will spend a lifetime honing their design skills in order to perfect their craft.
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Graphic designers and artists incorporate these principles into their works to create visually appealing designs. Rhythm in art is usually not as obvious as the design principles of repetition and pattern. In the example below, the diagonal lines aren't arranged in a specific pattern. You can achieve unity by making clear relationships between visual elements.
Focus and Emphasis
Visual hierarchy is the way your website or application uses contrast, size, color, and other factors to give some elements more important than others. You can create a visual hierarchy with color, size, placement (or position), weight, proximity, grouping, and more. After color, if there is one characteristic that stands out in any design, it is size. Our brain is very visual, and it can interpret changes in sizes and shapes before it can even read text. Children too can understand big/small in the developmental years itself. So, employing size to bring out the contrast in design is a great technique.
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Movement in a composition creates interest and dynamism that keeps the viewer engaged. Lack of unity would make your design feel cluttered and confusing. Viewers will be attracted to the wrong element of the design and won't get a clear message. A good rule of thumb is to place an element in your design only if it enhances the message. Lack of balance would make your design feel heavy on one side and empty on the opposite. If you're wondering about principles of design balance examples, you’ll know your design lacks balance when it feels as if it’s falling off to one side.
Legibility and Readability
Additionally, using lines, color, and contrast strategically can help direct the viewer’s gaze in a specific direction. This Oxfam poster features a relatively monochromatic color palette, but achieves contrast using different type styles. The larger tagline uses a thicker serif typeface, while the call to action utilizes a clear, slightly smaller sans-serif typeface. When you look at a design composition from now on, think of these principles and how they are being applied.
Don’t interrupt or give users obstacles – make apparent pathways that offer an easy ride. This spread, also by Studio8 is divided into two halves with reversed out type on the left. Each page provides information about two separate but related products.
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For example, two text blocks on either side of the page would create symmetrical balance, even if the content of those blocks wasn’t identical. Using motion design, through animation or movement, can also create emphasis by capturing the viewer’s attention. Emphasis can be achieved through various design elements such as color, size, position, and motion. By paying attention to balance and alignment, designers can create compositions that are both visibly harmonious and engaging.
Learn More about Design Principles
It brings together lines, shapes, forms, values, and many of the principles we've already discussed. It creates consistency, especially in web design tools, where things like colors and buttons need congruence to build trust and familiarity. Color, value, and texture are just a few ways to achieve this, but also principles such as contrast movement and proportion. Lines are the most essential elements in design, forming a distinct mark between two points.
We have been detailing the impact of utilizing contrast in design for quite some time now in this blog. Now that we know that in detail, let us move on to understanding how you can actually use it in your designs. Picking things with a common theme and grouping them can make it easy to comprehend the message for consumers. This is for a simple reason for your message to be coherent to the customer, some elements will have to carry similar design styles. If everything is contrasting and popping out, there will be no central element for the customer to focus on.
You’ve likely seen this famous print before, which is known as the The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This iconic artwork not only showcases the power and beauty of nature but also effectively promotes the design principle of movement through its composition and visual elements. Contrast is a great tool to organize the visual hierarchy of your design.Visual elements with a high degree of contrast quickly stand out to the eye. For example, placing white text against a black background creates strong visual contrast due to the stark tonal difference between light and dark. This gives the illusion that the text is popping out from the overall background of the design.
And if you consider the rest secondary, they’ll all help you ace your next design project. Proportion is one of the most important principles in art and design because it affects every other aspect of your work. If your designs have poor proportions, they will look unbalanced and unnatural.
Symmetrical balance occurs when an image has identical visual balance around both sides of a central axis. Read our Paper 101 guides to learn more about everything paper and cardstock, including specialty papers and cardstocks, paper weights and finishes, and our Ultimate Gard Stock Guide. I'm a design writer, design mentor, and entrepreneur leading Laura Keung Studio, currently based in Munich, Germany. With 12 years of experience in the design industry, I lead my own design studio and collaborate with other creatives on branding and editorial design projects. Alignment is about making sure that elements are aligned properly and consistently.
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