3 Graphic Design Rules for Excellent Results

Graphic design is a discipline that sticks to strict rules working on deeper aspects to maintain the stability and balance of work. When the work lacks such balance, this will not be effective.

There are three basic design principles that will enable a new project to become remarkable.

Emphasis

When designers create a poster for a concert, they should think about the first piece of information that an audience wants to know. It may be the band name or concert venue. It could also be the day of performance or price of the ticket.

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First, they can outline it mentally. They should organize the information in their brain and lay out their design to communicate such order. If the most important information is the band name, it should either be placed in the center or have the largest font. Or else, it could have the boldest print. It would help to know more about color theory so they can use the right color combination to make the band name stand out.

Similar to writing with no outline and building with no blueprint, starting a composition without being sure of what to communicate will not yield successful results for a web design.

Movement

Referring to the concert poster, if the band name is considered to be the most important detail on the page and the venue comes second, how will these be communicated with an audience?

Movement controls the elements in a composition to guide the viewer’s eye from one to another, properly communicating the information to the audience. Movement creates the story or work’s narrative: a band will be performing; this will be the venue; the concert will start at this time; this is the way to buy tickets. Though elements such as alignment, contrast and most especially balance will work to achieve their goal, when there is no proper movement, the web design will turn out to be a failure.

When looking at the design and the eye gets “stuck” on an element that is either too bold, too big, off-center or with a wrong choice of color, this should be adjusted so there will be harmony.

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White space

The rest of the elements works with the things added to the web design. On the other hand, white/negative space deals with things that are not added. White space is simply an empty page in a composition. It can be danger zone for those who are new to graphic design. Most of the time, giving more room for a composition to breathe can turn a plain and boring design to a successful one.

White space is effective in creating organization and hierarchy. It is natural for the brain to associate white space surrounding an element with luxury and importance. A viewer’s eyes can see that objects in one area are grouped apart from the others.

What makes it more exciting is that it is capable of communicating totally different image/idea from the main design. The audience will be rewarded for engaging with it. Active space is being used by the logo on top to convey several ideas in one creative design.