You’re probably wondering what makes good design and how you can create visual materials that stand out.
While no one can answer this question in just one paragraph, you should know that there are a few elements and principles of design that can make your work much more manageable. So, what are the elements of design?
The elements of design are the parts that define the visual, the tools and components that a person uses to create a composition. In other words, they represent the base of graphic design.
The principles of design, on the other hand, are all about how a person uses the elements to create a visual and convey a message.
These elements and principles of design represent a set of guidelines that have the purpose of helping you create aesthetically pleasing visuals.
The most significant difference between design principles and elements is that the latter can be labeled as rules, while elements are the components that are going to help you follow those rules for the best design outcome.
And even though rules can be broken, they have been created for a reason.
Design is all about carefully combining design elements and using the right principles to create a visual representation of an idea.
In today’s article, I will walk you through some of the most essential design elements and principles of design that will hopefully provide the inspiration you need for your next projects.
Elements Of Design
1. Line
Lines are the most basic element of design, and they make up pretty much everything. They can also be defined as linear marks that can describe a shape or outline something.
You’ll often see that lines are also used to create perspective or evoke a certain feeling. They can be thick or thin, vertical, horizontal, or diagonal, or they can create texture. A straight line can send the feel of order and neatness, while a wavy line can create movement.
A technique that’s often used with lines is directing the eye towards a particular area of a design. You can play around with this type of element and see how you can implement it in your visual materials.
The great thing about using a design tool such as Bannersnack is the fact that you don’t need to create lines from scratch. In the Elements section, you can now find 80 new, end-to-end scalable, flexible lines and arrows.
These elements will help you create more diverse content, such as infographics, mind maps, flows, or routings. You can also use them as connectors or separators.
The design possibilities are endless thanks to these elements.
2. Color
Color is one of the most important elements of design because they can evoke certain emotions. It’s well-known that the color red is usually associated with love, passion, or anger.
There are also cultural differences that you need to take into account when using colors in design. For example, a color that’s happy in a particular country can send negative emotions in another one.
Also, something as simple as changing the hue or the saturation can send a different type of feeling.
Color has three different properties:
- Hue, which is the color name;
- Saturation refers to how intense the hue is;
- Value refers to the lightness and darkness of the hue.
You can use color as a background, or to support other elements in your design. Combining colors between them is the key to creating a visual that matches your brand.
3. Shape
I talked above how lines can create shapes, among other things. By reversing this, we can define shapes as something enclosed by lines, which are its boundaries.
Shapes can be geometric (rectangle), realistic (animals), or abstract (icons), and they have two dimensions: height and width.
If you want to suggest feminity, then you can use curvy shapes such as circles. If, on the other hand, you want to induce a more masculine feeling, then use angular shapes.
The Elements section in Bannersnack has a Shapes category as well, where you can find anything from arrows to stars, ribbons, labels, badges, frames, speech bubbles, or blobs.
4. Space
You’ll often hear people refer to space as white space or negative space, which can be defined as the space between or around objects.
If you want to be creative with your designs, you can leverage negative space by manipulating it and forming an object, a shape, or an animal. When you use it strategically, you can genuinely create stunning designs that draw people’s attention.
5. Symmetry
Symmetry is one of those things that us, humans, find extremely pleasing. According to science, this happens because we love familiarity and when we see something that has symmetry in it, it’s easy for us to recognize it. It’s also one of the shortcuts we use to make sense of the world around us.
There are plenty of brands, such as Starbucks, Target, or Chanel, that use symmetry in their logos, and not only in their designs.
However, note that there’s a fine line between symmetry and making it seem like the other side of the design was copied and pasted from the other one. It’s recommended not to strive for perfect symmetry but to add elements that suggest this idea.
6. Scale
Scale refers to the size of an element in relation to another one, and it can help bring balance, proportion, and hierarchy in any design.
Usually, scale is used in design to represent the accurate size of an object or to emphasize the difference in size between two objects. However, if you want to create something that you will make an impact on your audience, then it’s best if you forget about scaling objects according to reality.
For example, you can make an elephant dramatically smaller than a cat and make the cat the size of a dinosaur.
If you want to draw attention to a particular object, then this is the way to go.
7. Texture
Texture refers to the surface quality of a design, which can be smooth, rough, glossy, etc. It can be physical or visual. For the purpose of this article, we’ll talk about visual texture.
Clean designs are nice and all but adding a little bit of texture can make it pop even more. You can use it to accentuate a specific part of your visual, so you draw people’s attention to the dominant part.
The use of a font or a background image that mimics a particular texture is going to help you create a memorable design.
8. Direction
Direction not only gives the illusion that there’s movement in your design, but it also lets people know where to look and how to move their eyes across the visual.
Generally, the human eye starts with the top left of a page and then gravitates towards the bottom right corner so you can take advantage of this pattern whenever you’re designing.
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