Graphic Design Basics
Notes
First Answer these two question:
- What’s the name of your project? 📛
- What’s his purpose? ↪
- Who is your audience? 🧑🤝🧑
The Moodboard
To begin the design process, you can start with a moodboard: a collage of photos, colors, description, anything you want in your project.
Proximity and Empty Spaces
Group items who are related together. Empty spaces around your items helps your audience to focus on content.
General Tips
- Make more version of your design and identify what you like most
- Ask opinions of your design from other people, possibly from the same audience you’re trying to reach
Ace Alignement
- Alignement of text and element usually can be on the left, on the center or on the right
- If you must do a simple social media post, you can use a line
- If you have more than one kind of elements, you must use a grid
- Ensure all of your elements are aligned perfectly
- Use equal spaces between your text and graphical element
Contrast: Opposites attract
- You can create contrast by changing font weight: light, regular and bold.
- An example of two contrasting fonts that can work togheter is Noto Sans and Noto Serif
- Visual Hierarchy: make bigger the most important information stand out
- You can create contrast with size, weight, colour and style
«Imagine your audience only has a few seconds to see your design, what is the most important thing they need to take away?»
Colors theory basics
- Color has implicit meaning
Four basic relationships between colors:
- Analogous
- Complementary (opposite on the wheel) = contrast
- Split complementary
- Triadic schemes
Warm colors and cool colors Warm colors are associated with energy and stand-out, while cool colors are calmly.
Tint vs shading Using the editor Start with a color and made it lighter: you got another tint of the same color Start again and make it darker: now you got another shade.
Marrying text and images
- Use transparency to lighten your photo and make it pop
- Use a slightly transparent shape to make your text stand out. example
Resources
- textstudio.com - generates text with famous fonts i.e. Looney Toons, Barbie, Stranger Things