Balancing a composition involves arranging both positive elements and negative space in such a way that no one area of the design overpowers other areas. Everything works together and fits together in a seamless whole. The individual parts contribute to their sum but don’t try to become the sum. An unbalanced composition can lead to tension. In some projects, unbalanced might be right for the message you’re trying to communicate, but generally you want balanced compositions. However, design principles aren’t hard and fast rules. They’re guidelines. There’s no one right way to communicate that two elements are similar or different, for example. You don’t need to follow any of these principles, although you should understand them and have a reason for breaking them.
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A handful of simple shapes have been used throughout time in the art of all cultures: the circle, intersecting lines, the triangle, the square and the spiral. Each fundamental shape never varies in its basic function because each unifies purpose with form. Don’t let the simplicity of these forms fool you. It is because they are so simple that they have the ability to scale consistently and are used as the building blocks of nature and the man-made world. They also provide consistent messaging for a logo. In this third part of the series, Maggie Macnab will talk about how geometry influences logo design.
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The essential property of a pattern is repetition. Because they are continuous, they read like a story. The periodic migration of herds, the transit of constellations across the sky and the distinct features of different terrains are all examples of patterns that create expectations upon which we depend. Designers use patterns based on nature because they are reliable. This three-part series explores fundamental creative strategies for designing effective logos. The first part showed how to use symbols, metaphors and the power of intuition. In this part, Maggie Macnab shows you how to use nature’s patterns in logo design.
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Animation on the web has the potential to revolutionize our small bright box. We can go even further than traditional animation because we can accept user feedback and input. With these tools we can throw away the soul-destroying, bleak, dark engagements that govern things like airline ticket purchases. We can bake animation into the core of our user experience process to create dazzling, exciting, and engaging work that pushes boundaries and collectively elevates the medium of the web. We can help people by unfolding scenes like a choose-your-own-adventure that can feel fluid, interesting, and intuitive!
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Designing a good logo is the utmost in creative problem-solving. The process makes you really think succinctly about how relationships work. The practice of logo design develops your skills of intuition to recognize obscure but effective solutions and teaches you to discover connections that aren’t apparent on the surface. Adding a universal quality to a logo provides the broadest communicative reach, what almost all identities are intended to accomplish. This three-part series explores fundamental creative strategies for designing effective logos. The first part shows how to use symbols, metaphors and the power of intuition.
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Have usability conventions and the web’s universality steered us away from proper art direction? Have we forgotten about art direction altogether? Marko Dugonjić believes so. As designers, we can achieve much more with type, and with just a little more thought and creativity, we can finally start to take full advantage of the type systems available. Let’s look at ways we can push typographic design on the web further, beyond the status quo of today.
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In this article, Colleen Roller will show us that defaults are powerful because they provide a way for users to passively decide, thereby easing the difficulty and effort associated with decision-making. Also, that providing a default option is not always appropriate. Sometimes, it’s better for users to make an explicit choice — especially when they are more likely to follow through with a decision and be more committed to taking action on it. It’s imperative to understand that the design matters. UX design professionals have a responsibility to understand how design itself influences — and sometimes even drives — user perception and behavior and, therefore, decision outcomes. The decisions we make as designers matter.
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Jeremy Girard loves being a web designer and he’s incredibly thankful that he decided to join this industry many years ago. Still, there have been a number of times during his career when his passion has waned. This scenario is called burnout. Do you find passion for your work an important part of your career? If so, what have you found to be helpful in keeping that passion for your job intact? In this article, Jeremy shares his moments of burnout in his career and what you can do to avoid them.
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Are you designing at “Retina” resolution in Photoshop? In this article, Murdoch Carpenter will walk you through the problems he faced in creating Retina mockups to be displayed on a tablet device. He will then explain a way to work that is easier and gives you better performance. This is about Murdoch’s experience with Photoshop, but it could be applied to Illustrator and other software. Throughout this article, he will use the @2x and @3x notation. These represent the Retina buckets for iOS. A great example is the app’s icons.
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Compositional flow determines how the eye is led through a design: where it looks first, where it looks next, where the eye pauses, and how long it stays. You have a lot of control over where people look when they’re viewing a webpage you’ve designed. On a text-heavy and graphic-light page, a visitor’s eye likely follows something like a Z-pattern or F-pattern across and down the page. However, as soon as you design page elements and add graphics, those patterns no longer apply. Your visitor’s eye will follow the flow, movement and rhythm you create.
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