How Does Design Enhance My Message? (Part 1)
As a professional communicator, you want to help your audience get your message as quickly and easily as possible. How you do that takes some basic knowledge about the tools and principles that define and affect design, whether on paper or a computer screen.
From reading this series, you’ll develop skills to critically evaluate how your professional communications look and feel and ensure that your audience is getting your message visually as well as verbally.
To keep this simple, I’ll present this information in several parts. Part 1 will talk about the building blocks or tools of design. Part 2, which will come out next month, will introduce the principles of design. From there we'll apply these tools and principles to three aspects of your marketing communications efforts: logos, page layout and web design. Together, these will give you a basic vocabulary to discuss, evaluate and enhance the visual aspects of your message.
In the twenty-first century, you’re exposed to millions of messages every day. As communications and marketing professionals, you create messages you want people to pay attention to, and there’s a lot of competition for people’s attention. Once you’ve chosen the information you want to convey, how do you make sure it engages your desired audience? Before written communication, before spoken language, people relied on what they saw. What we see is still critical to communication, just as important as all the language we lay on top of it.
The Elements of Design
So how do you evaluate the visual aspects of your message? Is it clear, comprehensible, effective? What is the visual impact of your professional communications? What is the best possible packaging for your message? Every job requires the right tools. These are the elements of design. Five simple terms that describe the building blocks of visual communication are:
1) LINE: For our purposes, let’s call this a connection between two points. It doesn’t have to be straight; it just has to go from one place to another. In design, a line could be a typical two-dimensional pencil line. But it could also be a line of type, a border, an outline, a horizon, or even the demarcation between two fields of color. It can corral things and unify them, or separate them.
2) SHAPE: A shape is the area contained within or enclosed by an outline. Things are either inside or outside of a shape. Shape allows you to make a judgment as to what’s the object and what’s the background. There’s some overlap with the term ‘line’, in that many graphic lines are also shapes. A line of bold text has a shape. Borders and frames are lines, but they’re also shapes.
3) MASS: Mass in visual communication is gravity. The eye is drawn toward it. Think of this as metaphorical weight. Looking at the design of a message, which areas feel the heaviest? Why? That part of the image could be larger, darker, more densely packed, busier. What makes for visual lightness? Lighter colors, more blank space between shapes, fewer lines? Mass is more subjective than line or shape, there’s an element of interpretation here.
4) TEXTURE: Texture is the surface quality of an object. Is it rough and jagged like a rock, or smooth and soft, like silk? In graphic design, we’re talking about implied texture, a two dimensional rendering that looks like, or conveys the emotional/tactile experience of an actual, physical texture.
5) COLOR: Color is reflected light. Rays of light contain all the colors of the spectrum. Our eyes respond to reflected light. When light hits a piece of red cloth, the red wavelengths are reflected for our eyes to see. In design, we can use color to unify or to separate. We can use emotional reactions to color to enhance our message. We can even use the term “color” in describing different values of grey.
So these are the tools you have to work with. Any print or web-based visual communication, magazine ad, pop-up, web page, annual report, newsletter, flyer – anything we create and hope to communicate can be broken down into these elements.
Now you need to know how to evaluate the way these design elements are used. In Part 2, I’ll talk about the Principles of Design: the concepts we use to organize or arrange the structural elements of design, with the goal of creating the most effective, memorable message for your audience.
Enrico Design can help you get your message to your target audience with impact and memorability in print and on the web. Whatever your organizational goals, we keep you top-of-mind with your customers and prospects. Visit www.enricodesign.com, call 781-631-2520 or contact us by e-mail.
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