Four basic principles:-

Proximity

Alignment

Repetition

Contrast

Emphasis

Balance

Flow

Proximity

The basic purpose of proximity is to organize. By simply grouping related elements together into closer proximity, automatically creates organization. When the information is organized, it easy to be read and more likely to be remembered.

Items relating to each other should be grouped close together to become one visual unit rather than several separate units. This helps organize information and reduces clutter.

Items or groups of information that are not related to each other should not be in close proximity (nearness) to the other elements.

When several items are in close proximity to each other they become one visual unit rather than several separate units. As in life the proximity or the closeness, implies a relationship.

Page becomes more organized, will understand where to begin reading the message and you know when you are finished. The white space (the space around the letters) becomes more organized as well.

What to avoid?

avoid to many separate elements on one page.

don’t stick things in the corners and in the middle.

avoid leaving equal amounts of white space between elements unless each group is part of a subset.

avoid even split second of confusion over whether a headline, subhead, a caption, a graphic etc, belong with its related material. Create a relationship among elements with close proximity.

don’t create relationship with elements that don’t belong together! If they are not related, move them apart from each other.

Alignment

The basic purpose of alignment is to unify and organize the page. It is often a strong alignment (combined with the appropriate typefaces) that creates a sophisticated look, or a formal look, a fun look or a serious look.

Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily. Every element should have some visual connection with another element on the page. This creates a clean, sophisticated and fresh look. When the items are aligned on the page it creates a stronger cohesive unit.

Be conscious of where you place elements. Always find something else on the page to align with, even if the two objects are physically far away from each other.

Unity is an important concept in design. To make all the elements on the page appear to be unified, connected and interrelated, there needs to be some visual tie between the separate elements simply by their placement.

Lack of alignment is probably the biggest cause of unpleasant-looking documents. Our eyes like to see order; it creates a calm, secure feeling.

What to avoid?

avoid using more than one text alignment on the page.

please try to break away from a centred alignment.

Repetition

The principle of repetition states that you repeat some aspect of the design throughout the entire piece.

The purpose of repetition is to unify and to add visual interest.

The repetitive element may be a bold font, a thick rule (line), a certain bullet, colour, design element, particular format etc.

Repetition can be thought of a “consistency”

Repetition help organize the information. It helps guide the reader through the pages; it helps unify disparate parts of the design. Even on a one-page document, repetitive elements establish a sophisticated continuity.

Repetition is very useful on one-page pieces and is critical in multi-page documents (where we often just call it being consistent).

What to avoid?

avoid repeating the element so much that it becomes annoying or over whelming.

Contrast

Contrast is one of the most effective ways to add visual interest to your page – a striking interest that makes people want to look at the page.

Contrast on a page draws our eyes to it, our eyes like contrast. Contrast is kind of like matching wall paint when you need to spot paint.

The first purpose is to create an interest on the page and the second purpose is to aid in organization of the information. A reader should be able to instantly understand the way the information is organized, the logical flow from one item to another.

The contrasting elements should never serve to confuse the reader or to create a focus that is not supposed to be a focus.

The important rule to remember is that for the contrast to be effective, it must be strong. Contrast is created when two elements are different.

The principle of contrast states that if two items are not exactly the same, then make them different. Really different.

Contrast can be created in many ways. You can contrast large type with small type, a graceful oldstyle font with a bold san serif font, a thin line with a thick line, a cool colour with a warm colour, a small graphic with a large graphic etc.

You cannot contrast 12-point type with 14-point type or contrast dark brown with black.

The easiest way to contrast is with typefaces but don’t forget about rules, colours, spacing between elements, texture etc.

What to avoid?

if you are going to contrast do it with strength.

avoid contrasting a sort-of-heavy line with a sort-of- heavier line.

avoid using two or more typefaces that are similar.

if the items are not exactly the same, make them different.

Emphasis

The principle of emphasis states that the most important element on the page should be the most prominent, the second most important element should be second to the most prominent and so on.

Emphasis the most important elements provides a foundation that you can build the rest of the layout on and is the quickest way too draw attention too your message.

The primary focus of emphasis is the intellectual analysis of your message to determine which words and phrases and graphics are the most important, therefore should be the most visually prominent.

Emphasize in your page depends on two major points; the content of the message and which part of the message are most important.

The advantage of using emphasis in page designs is that critical information is more prominent, which makes it easier for the quickly scanning reader to pick out vital information from the body of the design.

An additional benefit to emphasizing elements on your page is that they are more visually interesting to look at. Successful emphasis of an element is achieved by making it look different from other elements on the page, such as making an emphasized word bigger or bold it.

Decide What Is Most Important

Begin by deciding which words of phrases or graphic are the most important. Also consider what pars of your message might attract the largest amount of your audience.

After that, you need to develop a visual hierarchy plan for your page. Visual hierarchy simply refer to the arrangement of visual elements such as type and images on the page according to their order of importance.

* please refer page 22

When analysing what you should emphasize, ask yourself the following questions:


• What is your primary message?


• Which element best communicates this primary message?


• Is there a secondary message?


• Which visual element is the most interesting?

Emphasis Techniques

Professional graphic designers use a number of visual techniques to emphasize key elements and establish a strong visual hierarchy. To emphasize an element you can try:

please refer page 25

When analysing what you should emphasize, ask yourself the following questions:


• making it biggest


• making it boldest


• using contrasting colour on it


• adding drop shadow


• surrounding the element with lots of white space

Balance

The principle of balance is concerned with the distribution of visual elements on a page in order to achieve a pleasing and clear layout. The purpose is to avoid clumping elements in one location on the page, which can result in one section of the page looking overloaded or busy.

People are more comfortable with balanced design and are more likely to stick around to read the page. A balanced design is one in which the visual weights of all of the elements are equally dispersed throughout the layout.

Visual weight is the illusion of physical weight of a visual element on the page. E.g. A bright red graphic will have more visual weight than the same graphic in gray.

Before attempting to achieve a good balance, you need to have decided which words, phrases, and graphics you should emphasize and which elements belong together.

Symmetrical vs Asymmetrical Balance

You can achieve balance through either symmetrical or asymmetrical layouts. A symmetrical balanced layout is one in which visual elements are mirrored from side to side or from top to bottom. Using symmetrical balanced layout works just fine when you are trying to convey a sense of dignity, history or formality.

In an asymmetrically balanced layout, the words, phrases and graphics are arranged unequally on either side of the imaginary axis, yet the focus is still on achieving a harmonious balance.

In a symmetrical layout, if there was an image of an animal on the lower left side of the page, it would be balanced out by a same size image of an animal on the lower right. In an asymmetrical layout the animal could be balanced out by one or more pieces of type, photos, shapes, colour etc.

This open-ended variety of choices makes creating an asymmetrical layout more challenging. Asymmetrical layouts often, but not always have one or more strong diagonal elements in them with type, graphics, lines, photos and other visual elements placed at an angle on the page.

Flow

Flow simply refers to the visual and verbal paths of movement in which the reader’s eye track through a page or pages. A page with good flow will visually lead the reader from one element to another element in the layout, carefully presenting information to the reader.

To develop strong flow in your message, you will have first understand the message and analyse how any graphics you have available may support the message.

There are two types of flow, verbal flow and visual flow. Verbal flow is the order in which the reader reads the text on the page. Visual flow is the order, which the viewer looks at the images and graphics on the page.

Verbal Flow

Verbal flow is how the text is arranged on the page and the order in which the reader reads the material. In western culture people read text from left to right and top to bottom.

Good verbal flow is achieved primarily through consistency in typographic by set up the typographic master plan. Typographic master plan should include such details as the typefaces, size and colour you will use for the headlines, subhead, body text, picture caption etc. that your document will use.

A consistent typographic master plan helps reader clue-in to the plan, know what to expect and it will be easier for them to follow the text through the document.

Techniques to Enhance Verbal Flow

(please refer page 133)

Place headlines near their articles

Choose an easy to read typeface and use it consistency through an article

If articles flow onto other pages, keep text consistent in term of typefaces, size, colour etc.

Visual flow

Visual flow is the order in which the viewer looks at the images on the page. On pages where text and images are intermixed, view’s eye tracks in a backward ‘S’ pattern.

This is useful to know because you can pick images to control or enhance the visual flow through the page. You can deliberately place images to point toward important information, encouraging the viewer to read it.

Go to Principles of Design additional notes