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basic principles of
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Contrast attracts the eye, adds visual interest to a composition and can be in many different forms. Your first thought may be color contrast such as warm vs. cool and dark vs. light. While color is an extremely essential principle of contrast, there are also things like contrast of type, alignment and size. These different principles all play a vital role in whether or not you have a successful design that’s appealing and easy to follow.
CONtrast
When presenting a design or an idea your choice of colours is very important. Many surveys have been carried out on the general public to find out what people like. An important rule of the colour wheel is that colours opposite to each other on the colour wheel usually work well together as a colour scheme. These are known as complemenatry colours.
The purpose of graphic design is to communicate, not dazzle, and an inconsistent design will result in decreased user effectiveness. This means keeping individual visual and typographic elements simple and clear. It also means applying them uniformly, so that the connotations of a particular type style, or the results of interaction with a particular graphic element, are independent of their context. There should be an overall visual system to the text, carefully considered in the first stages of design, that brings together the elements into a coherent whole.
Balancing a composition involves arranging both positive elements and negative space in such a way that no one area of the design overpowers other areas. Everything works together and fits together in a seamless whole. The individual parts contribute to their sum but don’t try to become the sum. An unbalanced composition can lead to tension. When a design is unbalanced, the individual elements dominate the whole and the composition becomes less than the sum of its parts. In some projects, unbalanced might be right for the message you’re trying to communicate, but generally you want balanced compositions.
Repetition is simply the process of repeating elements throughout a design, or several pieces of design collateral to give a unified look. You can think of it as adding consistency to a design. Repetition works with pattern to make the artwork seem active. The repetition of elements of design creates unity within the artwork. Patterns often occur in nature, and artists use similar repeated motifs to create pattern in their work. Pattern increases visual excitement by enriching surface interest.
Alignment (like the name suggests) is all about organizing elements relative to a line or margin. This doesn’t have to be a literal line in your design; in fact, it’s usually an invisible margin implied by the way your design is arranged. The use of grids and guides can aid in placement and alignment of both text and graphics.
Compare any two elements in a design. Either the elements will be equal in every way or one will exert some level of dominance over the other. The more dominant element will attract the eye and get noticed first. It might even appear to exhibit some sort of control over the less dominant element. You create dominance through contrast, emphasis and relative visual weight. Identical items can’t dominate each other. To exert dominance, an element has to look different from the elements it’s meant to dominate.
Hierarchy enables visitors to scan information. It helps you communicate a message quickly and effectively. The top of the hierarchy (the dominant element) should help to answer questions a visitor might immediately have upon landing on the page. Within seconds, visitors should be able to pick up the key points and main message of the page. They can do this if you make the most important information the most visually prominent. Hierarchy is conveyed visually, through variations in scale, value, color, spacing, placement, and other signals.
Using the right filter for all or most of your pictures can reinforce your brand’s culture and personality and may even make your posts more recognizable in the news feed.You can use filters to clean up or retouch your photos, apply special art effects that give your image the appearance of a sketch or impressionistic painting, or create unique transformations using distortions and lighting effects.
Designers have been known to compare choosing fonts for design projects to choosing an outfit to wear. Think about what your clothes might say about you: based on what you wear, people might rightly or wrongly make assumptions about your style, your personality. Typography often provides that at-aglance first impression that people gauge and judge the rest of the design by — so your font choices need to be purposeful and appropriate. Is your font saying “beach vacation” when it should be saying “job interview”?