The Basics Of Visual Design

What is a visual design? Of all the senses at our disposal, our sight is the most valuable to us. Just think about it. The user interface you use on your smartphone is visual.

The content you like to read is composed according to the rules of good visual design. When you want to warn someone, you yell, “Watch out!” We know intuitively that sight is the most important of our senses.

There are, of course, numbers that can prove it. 90% of information that’s sent to our brain is visual. We process visual information 600,000 quicker than textual information. We are much better at retaining visual information. But, for some reason, we tend to find some visuals more aesthetically pleasing than others.

What Is Visual Design & Why You Need It?

In general, visual design is concerned with composing aesthetic visuals that achieve a desired aesthetic effect. It is used in many fields and industries, but the term is most commonly used for design in visual communications. Web pages, landing pages, logos, infographics, icons, and other UI elements are all created to communicate with the user visually.

It’s possible to stumble upon a good combination of visual elements and create a visually appealing work product without being a skilled visual designer. However, that’s usually not the best way to create visuals.

A brand’s logo, content, or digital asset is too important and expensive to be left at the mercy of chance. That’s why it’s important to have a skilled visual designer working on any project that includes visuals.

At its core, it all comes down to manipulating design elements according to design principles to achieve the desired effect. As a visual designer, you will have visual elements at your disposal that make up a page. The way you arrange them and the effects created by the arrangement are called design principles.

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Basic Elements Of Visual Design – Visual Elements

As a visual designer, much of your work concerns choosing and organizing different types of elements. It’s not unlike building a house. Concrete, wood, plaster, bricks, and many other materials serve as elements of the house. You can’t have a livable house without them. In design, we work with slightly different elements.

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Dots, Lines, and Shapes

Every design you can think of can be presented using dots, lines, and shapes. They are the most basic of building blocks used in the design. Put a pencil on the paper, and you get a dot. Connect two dots and have a line. Connect three dots, and you can create a triangle.

Of course, you don’t have to create straight lines. If you take two lines and curve them in the right way, you get the shape of one of the most famous logos of all time — the Swoosh, Nike’s logo. You can make shapes in different ways than just by curving lines, though, but we’ll get to that.

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Color In Visual Design

There’s plenty you can do with colors. You can create shapes just by contrasting colors. Or you can also play to people’s associations of colors with certain feelings.

You can create the illusion of depth. You can differentiate, and you can emphasize.

Texture In Visual Design

Textures differ from colors because they represent something we feel with our sense of touch. They can be made in several ways, including using colors and repeating shapes. Textures help create a 3D feel and a more lifelike and immersive experience.

Basic Principles Of Visual Design

Principles are what you do with the elements to achieve the desired effect. If we stick with the house-building analogy, pouring concrete to create a foundation is a principle. Laying bricks to create walls and rooms is a principle. Choosing to lay enough bricks so that the ceiling is tall is a principle.

Putting a roof is a principle, as is making it steep so water doesn’t pool on it. The things you do in design are not the same, but they follow the same idea.

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Space In The Design

If you make a shape and color it in, you create positive space, which can be thought of as space taken up by something. The space that remains untaken is called negative space. Dealing with negative space is one of the key basic principles of visual design.

Visual Typography

The fonts you choose greatly influence the quality of your work. Their size, color, alignment, and spacing must combine to achieve the desired effect.

Unity Of Elements

When elements are arranged so that they appear to belong together, it’s called unity. Unity is good because it allows elements to form groups (words are groups of elements that are in unity). However, if there is too much unity, the visual design might appear dull.

Scale Of Elements

The scale is the relative size of the elements. Playing around with it will show you how it affects many other principles.

Hierarchy Of The Visual Elements

Some elements are more critical than others. You can form a visual hierarchy by using different sizes, colors, and placements of elements. That way, the essential elements will grab the attention first.

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Dominance, Contrast, and Balance

Dominance is achieved by relative scaling of elements to use one of them as a focus point. Usually, the bigger one gets attention, with the smaller one serving as a subordinate. It’s similar to contrasting — you use size, color, and direction to contrast two elements.

Balance is the perception that there’s an equal distribution of elements. You can disrupt balance to achieve a certain effect, such as guiding the viewer’s gaze.

This list is not definitive. You can use additional elements, especially if you design in 3D. And there are many more principles, as well. If you want to grasp visual design well, you will eventually need to learn as many of them as possible. But for now, these basics will help you get your feet wet. So go ahead — think up a concept, and design away!

Creative Presentation Ideas Using Visual Designs

Here are some resources to help you elevate your presentation skills using visual designs:

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Design Resources & Inspirations

Level up your design skills with these carefully curated resources:

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