Treat your work as a craft, because there’s always something you can improve on. Motivate yourself to become a better designer.

Last week, one of my readers posted a question: What makes a good visual designer?

Just as I’m trying to figure out how to answer that question. Recently I decided to teach myself Mandarin. When it comes to learning a new language, you need to start with the basics. The formation of nouns, pronouns and verbs is the basis for conveying a complex idea.

Language is a concept of how people communicate with each other. Visual design is a visual language. Learning visual design is no different from learning a new language.

Good visual designers are not born. They are made. The key to being a good visual designer is to be rigorous. If you make a conscious effort, you will be promoted to visual designer.

Here are some basics you should know to take your visual design to the next level.

Principle 1: Return to basics

You can tell a lot of designers by looking at their typography. Because this type is the foundation of design.

Type as imagery

You can create an entire design using types. You can also use type design as a basis to derive subtle queues from selected fonts. To improve typography in your design, first learn the basics.

Develop vocabularies that describe types. Understand terms such as tracking, kerning, and lead meaning. Article A Beautifully Illustrated Glossary Of Typographic Terms You Should Know is A good visual resource for learning these Terms.

Then, if you want a comprehensive understanding of how Typography can be Applied to The Web, see Web Typography: The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to The Web.

Font pairing can make or break a design

Finally, learn how to pair fonts. FontWolf and FontPair are great resources. Pairing fonts can dramatically change the dynamics of your design.

Principle 2: Use space to create balance

Spacing helps establish vertical and horizontal motion in your design. It is the key factor between creating visual layers and forming elements.

Create balance and visual harmony

You can always check out sites like Behance and Dribbble to learn how to use spatial elements. But the main thing is to use the space to develop my own intuition to create visual balance and harmony.

When studying typography, you need to be aware of the importance of spacing. Adjusting font spacing is a great exercise in developing your eye spacing. Therefore, I recommend you try KernType, which compares your kerning solution to your typewriter solution.

Award winning poster by Craig Welsh

Another exercise to help develop your eyes is as follows: Take an existing design, plot the X and y axes, reduce the design to basic shapes, analyze how the design balances, and then rearrange the elements. Pay close attention to how negative space affects the balance of elements.

Principle 3: Use size to create visual hierarchies

When creating visual hierarchies, size is a must. Build flow by using size to convey visual relationships between elements.

Scale is one of the reasons grids are available. Use the grid to make the scale of the elements more significant.

Once you have determined the size of an element, keep it the same across all instances of it. In design, consistency is king.

Use size to establish visual hierarchy

This is an exercise that will help develop the size of your eyes.

The key is to ask for feedback.

Login page for Sketch or WireFrame. Then show your friends your designs. Have them circle the most elements. They were then asked to number the elements of the circle according to their visual weight. Is the result what you expected?

When doing this exercise, please pay attention to the following points:

  • What is the conversion goal of the target page? How do you optimize to achieve your goals?
  • What are the relationships between the different elements? What elements do you want to emphasize?
  • Does your layout successfully guide the user through the page?

Principle 4: Use color to convey meaning

Color plays many roles. It conveys meaning, creates emotional resonance, and unites the design.

Color helps convey meaning in design

For more on Color, you can read my article Designing in Color. Here are a few key points from the article.

  • Determine your design purpose before choosing a color palette. Good design makes its color palette consistent with its purpose.
  • Determine your audience. People have different ideas about color. Color produces different influence to people according to people’s individual be fond of, culture is bred and experience.
  • When choosing a color palette, simplicity is key. Choose a neutral background color. Then select the primary and secondary accent colors. Finally, choose an error and success color for different UI states based on your other colors.

Once you have a good understanding of the basics of color theory, colors fall into experimentation and iteration. Actively try to push beyond your comfort zone and experiment with new color palettes.

This is an exercise that will help develop your eye color.

Take the time to create a palette of things around you, like photos, magazines, and your favorite shows. Then take the existing design and apply the new palette.

Notice how it changes the tone and tone of the design. Does it make sense to change?

Treat your work as a craft, because there’s always something you can improve on. Motivate yourself to become a better designer.

 

The original address: medium.freecodecamp.com/before-you-…

Jonathan Z. White

Translator: SKYUI

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