Good Design in Action

Before we proceed to the next activity, let’s take a look at some Habi-made designs and see how the different elements and principles of visual design build each other to create good design.

The Check-in Playbook Cover

Let’s name a few design elements in this cover:

1. Variety – This design used several elements such as type, lines, colors, and shapes.
2. Hierarchy – The font sizes used in this design place hierarchy between the text and other elements. This also aids the consumer in differentiating the title, subheading, key visuals, and other icons.
3. Movement – The use of hierarchy also allows movement in the design, allowing the consumer to first focus on the title, followed by the subheading, down to the key visual, and around the other elements.
4. Contrast – The contrasting colors of the elements help the consumer to visualize the foreground and background elements separately.
5. Harmony – With the combination of compatible elements and several design principles, this design was able to achieve harmony and cohesiveness in its elements.

Habi Shop Testimonial

What principles are the most obvious to you in this social media post? Let’s go through them one by one:

1. Balance – The side-by-side placement of the text and photo immediately creates balance in the poster.
2. Contrast – The light background color and darker colors of the text and graphics create a contrasting effect between the elements. 
3. Pattern – Try to notice the bullets in the background as well as the blue lines beside the photos – those are patterns that gives aesthetic quality to the design.
4. Emphasis – If you’d take a look at the text, the designer intentionally changed the text color and put a sentence in bold to create emphasis in that part of the quotation.
5. Harmony – Despite the various elements in this design, you can see how each of the them complement and support one another to create a complete design.

Habi Shop Sale Poster

Can you now immediately identify the principles in this design? Let’s try naming them together:

1. Balance and harmony – The positioning of the elements and the distribution of color and space create balance in the design, making it look stable and cohesive.
2. Proportion – The varying sizes of the elements, i.e. title, objects, shows which among them is the most important and less important.
3. Contrast – As also mentioned before, the contrasting colors of the elements allows the foreground objects to pop from the background objects. In this example, we can see the use of contrast in the text and the graphic elements.
4. Emphasis – Which do you think has the most emphasis in this design? If you’re thinking the “Teachers’ Month Special Sale”, you’re right! This kind of emphasis through the use of color is applied to catch the consumer’s attention.
5. Hierarchy and Movement – Hierarchy and movement are like siblings – the hierarchy of elements often, if not always, direct the movement. In this design, hierarchy is applied through the different font sizes and styles.
6. Pattern – Habi loves patterns! Noticed again that subtle bullets in the background?
7. Variety – Why not add variety for more creativity? This design used several design elements to achieve its uniqueness while also maintaining its clarity.