Principles of Design

The Principles
of Design

The Principles of Design

1. Emphasis

2. Balance and Alignment

3. Contrast

4. Repetition and Pattern

5. Variety

6. Proportion and Scale

7. Movement

8. White Space

9. Unity

​The principles of design are the rules you must follow to create an effective and attractive design composition.

Emphasis is the focal point of your design as well as the order of importance of each element within your design.
Imagine you are creating a poster for an event. You should ask yourself: what is the first piece of information the audience needs to know?
Let your brain organize the information and then lay out your design in a way that communicates that order. take your most essential information, place it in the center or make it the biggest element on the poster. Find a way to put Emphasis on the most important things.
Like writing without an outline or building without a blueprint, if you start your composition without a clear idea of what you’re trying to communicate, your design might not succeed.

Emphasis

​​Emphasis using color

​​Emphasis using placement and space

​There are many ways we can show Emphasis in our designs using things like color theory, placement, space, size and more.

​Experiment with these different elements in your design to see what works best for you.

Never forget that every element you place on a page has a weight. The weight can come from color, size, or texture. Just like you wouldn’t put all your furniture in one corner of a room, you can’t crowd all your heavy elements in one area of your composition. Without balance, your audience will feel as if their eye is sliding off the page.

Balance and Alignment

Symmetrical design creates balance through equally weighted elements aligned on either side of a center line.

​​Symmetrical Balance

Radial design arranges visual elements around a central point, creating a sense of symmetry in multiple directions.

Radial Balance

asymmetrical design uses opposite weights (like contrasting one large element with several smaller elements) to create a composition that is not even, but still has equilibrium.

Asymmetrical Balance

Contrast is what people mean when they say a design “pops.” It comes away from the page and sticks in your memory. Contrast creates space and difference between elements in your design. Your background needs to be significantly different from the color of your elements so they work harmoniously together and are readable.

Contrast

Value contrast is the difference in lightness or darkness between two colors or areas. Value is the technical term for how light or dark a color is, and it's measured on a scale from white to black.

Color Contrast refers to the contrast between different colors on the color wheel. Complementary colors (colors on opposing sides of the color wheel) have strong contrast. So, for example, yellow and blue are on opposite ends of the color wheel. As such, they have strong hue contrast.

​Value Contrast

​Color Contrast

Repetition in art implies the use of two or more of the same or similar elements such as colors, shapes, or lines. Rhythm is one of the methods of repetition used to create space between elements and to create a feeling of rhythm or movement in the user.

​Repetition
and Pattern

Andy Warhol's paintings frequently featured repeated or magnified images, whether it was soup cans, flowers, car crashes, or celebrities like Marilyn Monroe.

Two of the visual elements we use in creating a rhythm are shape and color. Repeating shapes grab the viewer's attention because the eye recognizes their similarity. Repeating color can be a bit more subtle but sets the tone of the composition, with a rhythmic undercurrent.

The repetition of visual elements, such as color, shape, line, or pattern, can create a sense of movement and flow. Rhythm can guide the viewer's eye through a composition. 

Variety is like spice in art! It's about introducing different elements or unexpected changes to break the monotony and keep the viewer engaged. It's what keeps a piece of art lively and interesting. While repetition can create a sense of unity or rhythm, variety ensures that artworks don't become predictable or boring.

​Variety

Proportion is the visual size and weight of elements in a composition and how they relate to each other. It often helps to approach your design in sections, instead of as a whole.

Proportion and scale

Standard proportion in art is the correct relationship between the sizes of different elements in a composition, as compared to reality. It's an important principle of art for creating realistic works, and artists can also use it intentionally to create different effects.

This is when an artist intentionally manipulates proportion to create a specific visual effect. This can make a composition more stylized and expressive.

Altered Proportion

​Standard proportion

This is when an artist uses proportion to show a hierarchy within a composition

Hierarchical Proportion

This is when one or more elements of a subject are too large or too small in relation to the rest of the subject

out of proportion

This is when an artist distorts proportions to create a stylized and expressive depiction of their subject.

Caricature

Movement refers to the way the eye travels over a design. The most important element should lead to the next most important and so on. This is done through positioning (the eye naturally falls on certain areas of a design first), emphasis, and other design elements already mentioned.

Movement

Artists can create pathways within their work to lead the viewer's eyes in a certain direction

​​Creating Pathways

Movement can be used to depict physical action in a still image, such as a character running.

​​Showing physical movement

The types of lines, shapes, and forms used can affect movement, like in a comic book.

​​using lines and shapes

All of the other principles of design deal with what you add to your design. White space (or negative space) is the only one that specifically deals with what you don't add. White space is exactly that—the empty page around the elements in your composition.

White Space

​White or Negative Space can make our design easier to read or understand. Using it correctly can make our design more organized and add harmony and unity.

The Unity Principle is achieved when other principles and elements of art have been applied together properly. Unity is the reason why viewers perceive an artwork as a complete one piece and not its separate parts.

Unity

Proximity means how near things are to each other. Unity can be created through proximity when parts of a composition are close together. The closer together they are, the more we tend to see them as a group.

​Different Examples of Unity in one artwork

Limiting the range of colors, materials, textures, lines or other elements in a piece will make a composition look more unified. It will appear simpler and easier to read as one work.

repeating certain colors creates color unity between elements; repeating elements of a typeface design creates textual unity; repeating proportional relationships between forms creates formal unity; etc.

Unity can be achieved by using continuing lines, edges and shapes to link together different areas and elements.

By using the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design you can achieve unity with your artwork!