ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

Design is a helpful tool that can bring order to chaos and randomness. Order in design is considered good because one can easily understand an ordered message. However, people’s perception of a good design changes over time – fashion and style in design consistently changes. Style in design is society’s needs, preferences and expectations of design. Whereas fashion (considered a superficial condition) is a current trend in design. Over time, this trend will evolve into another trend, and will most likely repeat itself.
A landmark project was completed by the Xerox publishing standards. In this landmark, they share their goals and tips for accomplishing good design. They firstly state that typography should be consistent, white space and graphics should be effectively used and lines and shapes should be controlled well.
The overall look of the designed page should be inviting. The design should be visually stimulating so that the viewer can be made curious and thus get involved with the design and its process. By raising curiosity in a viewer, one can more easily absorb the information.
Eliminating unnecessary information and elements is also imperative. A clear design can encourage one to read the information because the information appears to be less. Consistency also determines whether or not a design is appealing. For example, a magazine with many styles (with no specific theme coming through) and overfullness will simply overwhelm the viewer and cause them to lose interest. Information should be scannable.
Humans are inclined to be very set on dangers. These dangerous can also be seen as slight changes, even slight changes in design. We are thus drawn to anything unique or unusual in design; and if it’s not unique, it will simply be ignored.
People also search for the meaning of something in its physical form. If this meaning is appealing, then it can achieve much success. For example, the Transformers toys are toys that are disguised as something it’s not. This is a good concept and contributed greatly to the fact that these are best-selling toys. A well described and simple content (such as these toys) is defined as elegant.
Space attracts viewers – it looks accessible, unthreatening and manageable, whilst too little space looks crowded. Viewers are more likely to notice and object in too much white space, rather than too little white space.
Readability refers to the adequacy of an object to attract viewer, whereas legibility refers to the adequacy of an object to be deciphered. Making a page illegible (more readable) can easily be done by adding a background tint behind the text, making the text smaller and overlapping elements and basically making a fancy presentation – this would be a huge improvement. White and open spaces can add so much simplicity and attract a lot of attention – less is indeed more.