Graphic design is more than making “pretty pictures.” It’s engineering with art. I began as an illustrator and soon discovered that unlike fine art, graphic design does indeed have rules. This new territory was hard to navigate. What makes good design? What makes bad design? How much of a critique is subjective and how much is objective? There are many overarching rules that the average person would not be aware of. Some of them follow:
- Use effective type that communicates the message you want to send (Don’t use elaborate fonts for body copy).
- When creating book layouts, break long lines of text into chunks using a consistent grid system. One’s eyes become tired when scanning long horizontal lines of text.
- Make sure the right side of the text is not too ragged. Adjust letter spacing (leading/tracking) accordingly.
- Make sure no single word is on it’s own line and no single sentence is by itself on a following page.
- Never compromise readability for what you think is visually appealing.
- Use white space (negative space) to your advantage to relieve tension/clutter on the workspace. This prevents the eye from straining (something Apple is great at utilizing).
- Less is more. When in doubt, clean and concise is the way to go. Never overuse special effects.
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- Create pictures and logos that accurately reflect the message you want to send. Sometimes this means conducting research.
- Create consistent identity systems when branding. (Consistent fonts, logos, deliverables, color schemes, etc.)
- Do not split too many words with dashes. This leads to strenuous reading and choppy text.
Sometimes rules are meant to be broken. But why learn the rules if one is going to break them? This is so they will be broken properly. This is difficult to explain and usually something one learns with experience. I usually try to sum it up with the following statement: “If it looks intentional, it’s good, but if it looks accidental, it’s not.”
But what does this mean? This means that you can use dashes, overlap text, split letters, create tilted columns of text, create grids that are consistently inconsistent, implement lots of gradients, and break all of the other rules when appropriate. Sometimes this means asking yourself what message you are trying to send and emphasizing the rules you are breaking so the viewer knows that you are aware you are breaking them. For example…
Some of the most repulsive graphic design I have ever seen has been on medical brochures, high school websites, in car manuals, and especially on ads for local businesses. The average person sometimes believes that adding many special effects (glowing text, rainbow backgrounds, lens flares, textured text, etc.) will catch attention and instead leave viewers feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated. Usually these designs look like they were created by a ten year old in Microsoft Word. The final product ends up looking trashy. Look at nearly any coupon magazine, yard sale sign, or phone book advertisement and you will know what I’m talking about. Text is usually jumbled and there is little consistency in the design.
So how can one break rules effectively? One example includes a project I had done for Suzanne Evans Coaching. I was asked to create a banner for a website and include two photographs. We live in a culture that is saturated with color photography so I decided to create a monotone (make the photograph a single color). Creating a fully pink photograph as opposed to a standard color photograph helps to catch a viewer’s eyes while remaining true to the brand’s pink color. I decided to bold specific words in the logo to emphasize the message and left lots of white space in the image for readability. Letters were evenly spaced and I had implemented an effective grid system while mixing two different fonts (breaking another rule). This created a sharp design that popped and delivered an effective message.
The average person usually can’t spot good design but can sense bad design, despite whether he/she is aware of it. This is why it is important to know the rules before breaking them.
Tommy Cooper, Graphic/Web Designer
