You don’t have to be a professional to create great design
Yes it’s true, to be a great designer you need an eye for what visually works well and what doesn’t. However, you don’t have to be a professional graphic designer to create good design. Whether its graphic, web, advertising or videos, utilising these 8 key principles will enable you to produce content that is rich, balanced and digestible to your audience.
“Bad design is smoke, while good design is a mirror.”— Juan-Carlos Fernandez
Alignment
Align elements in a sharp and ordered fashion to eliminate visual clutter and ensure clean uninterrupted visual flow. It is okay to break out of alignment as long as its in a controlled manner.
Hierarchy
Structure content and typography in a manor that creates importance and hierarchy to the flow of information and brings focus to user tasks.
Contrast
Utilise contrasting techniques (black, white, thick, line modern or traditional) to order and emphasis design elements that are important. Contrast helps guide the viewers eye towards the most relevant features
Repetition & Consistency
An important aspect of basic design. It seeks to strengthen and tie the overall outcome by repeating design collateral to create a consistent look and feel.
This is especially relevant in brand consistency where repetition creates familiarity with a product(s).
Proximity
Form content and object relationships that compliment and aid user progression. This can be achieved by grouping objects close to each other or placing them further apart.
Balance
Whether the design is symmetrical or asymmetrical, it’s important to understand that balance is essential to achieve professional, attractive and digestible design solution.
Colour
Colour is responsible for evoking the mood of a design as well as establishing the brand essence.
Colour associations can, and often are used to delineate a type of industry e.g. greens being commonly associated to non-for profit and environmental causes. For more in-depth understanding delve into the world of colour theory.
Space
Negative space – the term often used for areas in a design that feature no content. It plays a critical part, often as important as the information itself.
When used correctly, negative space makes content digestible by creating “breathing room”. By simply manipulating negative space around design objects, we can draw our audience attention towards a particular goal or task. Negative space is extremely powerful tool in your design arsenal. Use it or loose it!