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Good Design
We all know what we like and what we believe is good design, but
creating strong and successful designs is a task that requires a careful
balance of creativity, recognition, consistency and readability.
There are many ‘rules’ for design, with many able to be broken - if
you understand how the basics of good design work and their relationship
within your layout. Some of the main concepts to follow include:
- Use restraint: - Don’t cram large amounts of information
into an area, believing more content is better. Allow empty areas or
‘white space’ to give your content room to breathe and make it
easier for the viewer to take in the message you are presenting.
This also applies to font use. Restrict yourself to a few font
families (weight and style variations: roman, bold, italic,
condensed etc…) and create variation with appropriate use of style
choices, rather than adding an extra font.
- Lead the eye through the design: - English speaking countries
read from left to right and top to bottom, which is why most layouts
are structured to be read from top left to bottom right. For
example, a typical print advertisement will start with a headline,
follow with detailed content (text and images) and end with a ‘call
to action’ and/or contact details and finally a logo. Within this
general order the key is to create a comfortable path for the eye to
follow within the space, resting on the key components reflecting
the what, where and who points of the piece. Creating areas of
interest and directing the eye to move throughout the design in a
logical order will help to ‘sell’ the content on display.
- Provide visual contrast: - A layout featuring a large amount of
text (or any other consistent element) will appear somewhat dull,
compared to a balanced design featuring contrasting elements and
tones. Both effective colour usage and shape variation will produce
suitable contrast to attract the eye and excite the viewer. Most
memorable designs will in some way utilise areas of visual contrast
and using this technique appropriately can effectively increase
interest and brand awareness.
- Format paged documents with constant elements: - Variation is
generally a good thing, however for a professional look across a
document featuring multiple pages a standard base design should be
implemented.
A constant page format (column placement/width, header, page numbers
etc…) should remain throughout the entire document, with variation
restricted to considered adjustment to the base style for sections
requiring a different approach.
- Choose colour wisely: - Use restraint again when choosing colour
- too many colours may still look pretty to some, but they do not
produce a quality result. Develop a small range of colours that work
well together with your design content and chosen structure and
expand this choice with percentages or tints of these colours to
provide variation. Too much colour can easily distract the eye and
confuse the viewer and always remember - not everything needs to be
highlighted!
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