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Graphic Design Article - Tying a Design Together
Design can look coordinated and tied together or uncoordinated and all over the place. In commercial design, the former is generally strived for, resulting in more viewer attention and direction, which translates into sales. There are some simple techniques that can be used to tie a design together:
- Borders
- Colors
- Fonts
- Styles
- Stories
Borders
Borders can frame an element and tie it together. Have you ever seen a painting first unframed, then framed? The frame is the icing. Not many works of art are unframed in a museum or gallery. Even if space on the wall is the frame, the art usually has a frame, or breathing room. Borders are a powerful method to drawing a design together.
Not only can the design as a whole benefit from the use of borders, but the pieces of the design can benefit from breathing room as well. Elements like paragraphs, images and logos with similar borders, or breathing space, can help tie a design together.
Colors
Colors that are complimentary, or opposite on the color wheel, bring out the vibrancy of each other.
What's the color wheel you ask? Imagine a circle with even pie slices for each of the following colors:
or:
- Red
- Orange
- Yellow
- Green
- Blue
- Indigo (Dark Blue)
- Violet
So red is more or less opposite green (it is not exact, since there is an odd number of colors), purple opposite yellow, blue opposite orange.
Example Color Wheel
Complementary colors really pop off the page when placed next to each other and really buzz.
Complimentary Colors Example - Green and Red
Analogous color schemes, (or colors next to each other on the color wheel),
Analogous Color Scheme Example - Green, Yellow Blue
and Monochromatic color schemes (colors that are different shades or lightness or darkness of the same hue) also tend to look nice on the page.
Monochromatic Color Scheme Example
Of course these are only general guidelines - many combinations of colors can be used to achieve different effects.
Split compliments are next to the compliments of the main color on the color wheel. So blue-green and yellow-green are split compliments of red. Other schemes that work well together include triadic colors, which are the colors on the points of an equilateral triangle on the color wheel. Examples of triadic color schemes include combinations such as red, yellow, and blue.
Reference article:
http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html
Fonts
Fonts, just like color, can clash. Using the same font can be an easy way to tie a design together. Using fonts that look nice together can work as well as analogous and complimentary colors can work together. So far, this author has not come across a font wheel. Nonetheless the color wheel can be applied to fonts. Using one, two or three main fonts seems to work well, going beyond three fonts on a page can easily clash. Two similar fonts look nice - like analogous colors - maybe Arial and Verdana. Opposite fonts - like script and Arial - seem to work nicely together, like complimentary colors. Varying font sizes can spice up a design.
Using the same font scheme throughout a design helps tie it all together. Fonts that are the same colors are safe, like fonts of the same style. Fonts on solid backgrounds are much more easily read.
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| Example of fonts working well together on the left and fonts not working well together on the right. |
Styles
Another method to tying a design together is the use of design styles. Example styles could be color cut-outs (SouthPark), minimalist (basic Absolute ads), beach (tikis and swim suits) etc. Another form of style could be layout designs. Maybe every page of a magazine has text in the small of the page and an image in the two-thirds. This would be a very strong unifying element.
Stories
A visual, written, verbal or audio story, or any combination of these things can be used to tie a design together. If one image of a man driving a car, is followed by an image of a man pulling over to the side of the road, then shows the person changing a tire, the images are tied together by the story. Even using clashing colors, unframed lines and varying fonts, a skilled designer might be able to tie the design together with a story.
In Conclusion
Designs that are all over the place and have no tying elements tend to be hard to look at and are generally not compelling. Designs that are tied together are generally nice to look at and can be used to direct action. Using frames, colors, fonts, styles and/or stories are all good ways to tie a design together.
Posted 01.10.06
by Tad Coffin
BusinessCreatorPro.com
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