5 Basic Principles of Designing

The below mentioned principles of designing will be of more use to beginners in the field of designing. Before you begin your design, you will have to take a paper & do a basic sketch of your idea. First thing you have to decide is the concept. Based on your concept decide on the layout. Then decide on the content and caption required. When this is over then think about the colour scheme to be used for the design. If you do this first and then start your design in the computer then it will be much easy. I have seen lot of people start the work directly on the computer without giving any thought to the concept. When I first started designing, I used to sit in front of the computer and will try innumerable number of designs for a single project. But to arrive at one particular design it will take lot of time. The reason is there is no clarity in thought and there is no planning in my design process. As a result we lost time and were in pressure to meet the deadlines. Designing will be much easier if we plan well. Apart from the above thoughts, designing also has 5 basic principles to be followed.

1. Colour Scheme: Any design will have a concept/ idea and a message. So when you are designing an artwork you should make sure that the colour, style and the layout suits the mood of the message. For example, a holiday package advertisement will mostly be associated with a blue/green or a yellow. In some cases a company will have its own colour scheme. In those situations you need to follow the colour scheme of the company strictly. For example, when you see a coke advertisement you can instantly see red everywhere.
2. White Space: Any design should have sufficient space because eyes like white space. Your design should not contain too much content. Lot of people wanted to put all the information about their company in a design. They wanted every single penny spent on design to be utilized to the fullest. But in reality a design which has all the information or too much of information will not get the desired attention. So if you keep only one message and minimum content in the ad the design will look neat and it will make the viewer to read it easily.
3. Usage of Picture: An artwork with a picture in it will have more recall value than a design without a picture. It is because our mind generally visualizes things. If you think about an incident we immediately visualize about the incident.  If you take dreams, again our mind can recall dreams only through visuals. That’s the beauty of the mind. So whenever you are designing make sure you use appropriate picture for the caption in the Ad copy. Do not make the mistake of using a picture just for the sake of using it. If your picture and message do not have any correlation then please do not use it.
4. Usage of Fonts: Most of the designs will contain a text in it. Generally the message of an AD will be communicated through a text. So it is important to use the fonts rightly. For example, if an advert is targeted to children and the font used is a traditional or corporate font then it may not be liked by the children. On the other hand, if you had used a childish font then the chance of the AD copy liked by the children is more.
5. Layout: Keep your design layout as simple as possible. Your layout should make the images text and all the elements in the design to flow easily just like a water flows in a river. If all the above mentioned points are followed properly then your layout will take care of itself. The only thing which you have to look out in a layout is the sequence in which the elements of design are placed. Say for example a particular design may require the image to be on top, caption to be under it, the body of the message below it and the logo in the bottom. There may be some instances it can be vice versa. When you choose a layout make sure you follow the sequence correctly.

The above mentioned principles are only the basics of designing. There is lot of other things in designing which you will learn on your own when you spend lot of time in designing. I hope the above mentioned list will help you with your next design project.