Let’s first agree that design is different from drawing in that design has a purpose behind it. Both are worlds full of great innovation and creativity that, if distributed to other fields, would suffice. However, the world of design, in particular, agrees with other neighboring worlds in having rules that govern it. You may feel that the word “rules” makes you think of strict laws that limit the creativity of designers, but it is quite the opposite. These rules actually enhance the beauty of design and bring stability to it, making it easier for viewers to understand it. If the design rules are not followed, my creative friend, the design loses its balance. For example, if you see a design that combines five fonts and a yellow color with white mixed with blue, this is far from creativity, craftsmanship, and the refined taste that distinguishes our designer friend. It is simply an ugly and confusing design that you would not accept when you see it for the first time, and it is not suitable for this creative world.
In addition, your knowledge of these principles will increase your general wisdom and strengthen your understanding and mental visualization of design, especially, which will definitely help you to develop your skills more and more, especially when you see examples that support the detailed explanation of these rules in the coming paragraphs of the article.
Balance and Alignment:
Two important elements of design principles are related to each other. It is about the way of placing and organizing elements by giving them their own space within the design. You should know that each element has a different weight, and the weight here is not in grams, but it can be a color, text, space, or anything else. To help you understand this more, imagine your design as a room in your house. When you enter the room, do you find the wardrobe on the bed and the desk inside the wardrobe? Definitely not. Instead, you find each element inside the room organized and placed in a certain way so that there is beauty and balance in terms of space. The same applies to design; without balance, the viewer loses the feeling of comfort, and the design loses its dynamism.
There are two types of balance in design. The first is a design in which the space is distributed into equally sized elements that are aligned on both sides of the centerline. The second type is a design in which the elements are of different sizes, such as having a large element with smaller elements, but they are still balanced.
As for alignment, it creates a link between the types of design. There are different types of alignment. There is left alignment, right alignment, top alignment, bottom alignment, or center alignment, both horizontally and vertically. It is of great importance for coordinating between images, texts, icons, and others, and it makes the design organized.
Contrast:
Contrast linguistically means difference. In terms of design, it is highlighting the difference between elements in the design. It has different forms, such as contrast in size, where one element is larger than another, contrast in shape, where there are rectangles and other elements such as circles. There is also contrast in color or alignment, or even lines. This principle is very useful in drawing attention to a specific aspect within the design. For example, if you are working on a design to correct a certain concept, contrasting the color of the wrong concept with the color of the correct concept automatically makes the user distinguish between the two. The contrast here makes the design describe itself, in addition to attracting the viewer’s attention. Also, it increases the dynamism and movement of the design.
Simplicity:
is the prevailing philosophy these days, which means stripping design down to its basic elements, avoiding excess colors and unnecessary information that are not needed in the design. This can be achieved by working on a single idea within the design. Simplicity makes the design message reach the viewer faster and increases the beauty and professionalism of the design. You may notice that most logos of major companies such as Google, Meta, and Apple are characterized by extreme simplicity, making them suitable for all other designs. Simplicity is a style followed by design teams in the world’s largest companies, as evidenced by the quote from the late Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple and one of the most important figures in the technology world throughout history: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If you are a user of Apple products, you will find this clear, and always remember my friend that simplicity is harder than complexity.
Proximity:
is a relationship between design elements, where related elements are close together, and unrelated elements are far apart. A pure logical definition… but never mind. The goal of proximity is to make the related elements appear as a single group to the viewer. For example, imagine that you are designing a business card for an employee, the business card has four pieces of information, namely the name, position, phone number, and address. In this example, you will find that someone may place this information inside the design so that the information appears as a closely related group. Someone else may divide the design into two groups, with each group containing the appropriate elements, and this is the proximity we are talking about, which helps to create space between the elements in the design.
Unity:
Everyone has seen a website or other design out there that seemed to just throw elements on a page with no regard for how they worked together. Newspaper ads that use ten different fonts come to mind almost immediately.
Unity refers to how well the elements of a design work together. Visual elements should have clear relationships with each other in a design. Unity also helps ensure concepts are being communicated in a clear, cohesive fashion. Designs with good unity also appear to be more organized and of higher quality and authority than designs with poor unity.
Hierarchy:
is a rule of design that is extremely important, where the elements are displayed in the design in a way that focuses on the most important element or focal point that the designer needs to emphasize through their design, and then the less important elements and so on. Hierarchy helps the viewer’s mind to easily capture the important information within your design. So, imagine with me, my designer friend that you are working on designing a poster to promote a specific conference or a restaurant. Ask yourself, what is the most important information that the audience needs to know? Is it the name of the restaurant, the discount offer, the opening hours, and so on? This is the most important element. As for the hierarchy and progression, the human eye automatically notices large elements before small ones, colorful elements before non-colored ones, weird shapes before the shapes that they are used to seeing. Also, things that are characterized by movement before static things. The hierarchy can also be used in designs that depend on specific steps or a particular sequence, where the design must be coordinated in a way that makes the first step appear before the second step, and the second step before the third step, and so on.
Movement:
Going back to our concert poster. If you decided the band was the most important piece of information on the page and the venue was the second, how would you communicate that with your audience?
Movement is controlling the elements in a composition so that the eye is led to move from one to the next and the information is properly communicated to your audience. Movement creates the story or the narrative of your work: a band is playing, it’s at this location, it’s at this time, here’s how you get tickets. The elements above—especially balance, alignment, and contrast—will work towards that goal, but without proper movement, your design will be DOA.
If you look at your design and feel your eye get “stuck” anywhere on it—an element is too big, too bold, slightly off-center, not a complimentary color—go back and adjust until everything is in harmony.
White Space:
White space—also referred to as “negative space”— is the areas of a design that do not include any design elements. The space is, effectively, empty.
Many beginning designers feel the need to pack every pixel with some type of “design” and overlook the value of white space. But white space serves many important purposes in a design, foremost being giving elements of the design room to breathe. Negative space can also help highlight specific content or specific parts of a design.
It can also make elements of a design easier to discern. This is why typography is more legible when upper and lowercase letters are used since negative space is more varied around lowercase letters, which allows people to interpret them more quickly.
