What are Principles of Design?

Design principles are one of the most important steps and practices that one must ensure in order to obtain a professional design. Principles of design aim to simplify the design process into some set of systems and procedures which when followed, lead to a professional design. Now there is no fixed number of Design principles and every designer has their own principles. After all, this is not math but design. However, upon researching and learning from multiple design professionals, we have come up with a list of design principles that are more or less consistent among various designers and give the best results.

We discussed earlier, there are different principles of design and it differs from designer to designer, but here is a list of design principles that the most important and most commonly used ones.

Balance

Balance simply means visual harmony. Good balance is like trying to create a Visual Harmony on your website. For example, avoiding one side of the website from having all the information when the other side has almost nothing. Balance can be measured in three forms: symmetrically, asymmetrically and radially.

Alignment

Alignment is the way in which elements are placed on the website. The most common usage of alignment is with text alignment, making the text written left, center, right or justify align. But alignment is more than just about text alignment, it is also used to add interest into your design. designers use alignment to add creativity to their designs. Good alignment ensures proper readability which in turn ensures good communication of your message.

Repetition

Repetition is basically creating a pattern in user’s mind looking at the user interface. Repetition is all about the consistency and the unity of the design in trying to create a cohesion between all the elements. Repetition is probably the most used in naturally intuitive design principle. It is extremely unlikely that a website doesn’t even have the modest amount of repetition. The most obvious example of repetition is typography, think about it, every paragraph is designed the same font size, every H1 heading should look like every other H1 heading and every H2 heading should look like every other H2 heading and so on, this ends up creating a cohesion. Repetition also helps in creating brand, style, consistency, a better user experience and of course repetition. Repetition should be consistent throughout a website’s typography, sets of buttons, stylings, spacings and very importantly header and footer.

Contrast

Contrast is a design principle where we try and differentiate one or more elements/visuals from others by differentiating them by help of colors, fonts, typography, repetition, alignment, or anything else. The idea is to make a particular element or visual to stand out to the users. In design terms – The visual design principle of contrast refers to the juxtaposition of two visually different elements. Contrast is when you notice the difference between two objects in the user interface and that difference emphasizes that they are different. This distinction might mean that they belong to different categories or have different functions or behave differently etc. To know more about Contrast you can check out this article – Why Color Contrast Matters in UI/UX Design ?

Hierarchy

When creating designs that hold data in a serial order, comprising of the principles of design is crucial for sectionalizing the topics accordingly in a hierarchical form. This application of the principles of design makes it easier for the user to navigate through the topics, creating a visual path that follows the principles of design by starting from the basic and leading to secondary important paths. Achieving this clarity and navigational ease can be done by applying the principles of design through the use of different font sizes to define the order, such as giving the top one the H1 tag, followed by H2, H3, and so on, in accordance with the principles of design.

Emphasis

When creating visuals, applying the principles of design is critical to improve the visual appeal and significance of your work. Minimum text, and hence maximum graphics and images. Use borders to emphasize the posts, and use frames to add images to them. It makes the design look well-structured and balanced. The use of borders around the designs or certain images is paramount in graphic design as they attract the visual interest of the audience to a greater extent than just simple text.

White Spaces

Not to make the design look cluttered and messy, it’s a good practice, according to the principles of design, to leave some white space to maintain the aesthetics and design of the image. It promotes visual hierarchy and makes it easier for the user to navigate through other information. Incorporating white space helps organize the design and makes the design stand out on its own.

Proportion

Proportion defines the size and scale between two elements in a design. Having Proportions in Design helps in giving a unique identity to the elements in design. Keeping elements proportionate to each other helps defining their relationship better. The relationship between them makes the design to look attractive and aesthetic. It helps keeping the similar elements assembled together. It also helps in maintaining the visual balance between the multiple elements in a design of different identity.

Principles of web design aim to simplify the web design process into some set of system and procedures which when followed, leads to a professional web design. There are many web design principles in web design like the C.R.A.P. design principle (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity), Design thinking, Accessibility, UI Patterns etc. etc.

These web design principles are meant to ensure that you do the most important things the right way in your design process. Make sure to follow these important web design process in order to get a professional web design.