CRAP You Need in Design – Contrast Repetition Alignment Proximity

Robin Williams

I was helping to mentor a friend of mine this week who designs, writes, and does just about everything else you could think of for a small local newspaper. He’s one member of a three-person team who puts the publication together bi-weekly. The only problem is, he’s never had any formal education on design.

Sound familiar?  Most folks dive right in to design without ever thinking of it as a discipline, believing instead that it is an art.  It’s both.  And even the greats had many years of school before producing masterpieces.

Without formal education, you’re looking around at design you like and mimicking it, but you can’t articulate why.  Wouldn’t it be easier to create visually appealing, technically correct designs if you knew what elements compose a good design?

The One Phrase You Must Know to Improve All of Your Designs

CRAP.  That’s it.  You’ve just gained 80% of the best knowledge on design I learned in a four-year school.  I learned it from the Non-Designer’s Design Book [Amazon link].  Robin Williams (not that one) breaks it down in the simplest, easiest to digest and keep down for the long run way you could ask for.  It’s loaded with explanations about:

• Contrast: used to get attention and make elements stand out
• Repetition: consistency, brand
• Alignment: “if your alignments are strong, you can choose to break an alignment and it won’t look like a mistake”
• Proximity: visual information which is closely spaced suggests a relationship

She goes on to cover typography too, all with fantastic examples with both before and after.

Read it.  You owe it to yourself.

Flickr Credit: David Salafia