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Wednesday 31 January 2018

8 Basic Principles of Design to Help You Create Awesome Graphics


Graphic design is a highly sought-after skill. Society cares about the way things look, and there is a constant need to produce high-quality design, whether it’s for advertisements, websites, logos, videos, banners, or web content. You don’t need to be a pro-designer to create highly shareable content—especially when adding design elements to photos you already have is as easy as a couple taps on your phone. Here are eight basic design principles to keep in mind when working with visuals and creating graphics.



1. Alignment

Alignment is an important fundamental of design, since it helps create a sharp, ordered appearance by ensuring the elements have a pleasing connection with each other. Aligning objects properly will clean up a design and eliminate the messiness or sloppiness that can occur when elements are placed randomly. In Spark Post, it’s easy to align elements in relation to each other or to your background photo thanks to the dotted line that appears when you move blocks of texts or shapes.

2. Hierarchy

When you have multiple elements in a design, you want to make sure you’re giving extra weight visually to your most important message. This is called hierarchy and it can be accomplished in a variety of ways—larger or bolder fonts, placing your most important message physically higher than other pieces of information, or using shapes to frame the focal point. Utilizing this principle in your design starts with your message first and the goals of your design.

3. Contrast

Contrast is an important principle of design because it lets you draw out the most important elements of a design and add emphasis. Contrast happens when two design elements are in opposition to each other, like black and white, thick and thin, modern and traditional, etc.

4. Repetition

Repetition is an important design basic because it helps strengthen the overall look of the design. It also ties together different elements to help them remain organized and more consistent. Consistency and repetition is especially important in branding because you want your particular look to be instantly recognizable. Read about how blogger Planning Pretty uses Spark Post to create a consistent brand with her imagery.
5. Proximity
Proximity is also helpful in creating organization on a page, since similar or related elements should be grouped together to create a relationship between them. Ideally you might cluster the elements together in a way that helps to declutter the overall design.

6. Balance

Balance gives a design its form and stability and helps to distribute the elements evenly throughout your design; this even spacing will offer an appearance that is professional and attractive instead of being jumbled and messy. Balance doesn’t mean elements need to be the same size, or that they must be distributed evenly across the page — it can be symmetrical or asymmetrical.

7. Color

Color is a significant part of design and should be considered carefully each time you start a new design. Colors are largely responsible for dictating the mood of a design — each color has something a little different to say. Green tends to make people think of non-profits or the environment, while red causes stormy emotions like anger, blue is more calming and passive, and yellow creates a sensation of happiness. You don’t need to study color theory to get it right—Spark Post suggests color combinations based on the image you begin with.

8. Space

The parts of your design you choose to leave blank are just as important as the ones you’re filling with colors, text and images. Negative space creates shape and can help highlight the most important pieces of information in your design. Never underestimate the power of simplicity.

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