Whatever you are designing, there are certain rules in design that will always be of great benefit to you. At some point, every creative has thought how they can speed up the design process and save time. Here are 7 guidelines that help to ensure you work efficiently.
1. Padding
Padding is incredibly important. Whether you are designing for a publication, logo or illustration, every design needs space. It is wise to keep distance between certain elements in the design to stop everything feeling crowded.
2. Balance
Harmony is everything in design. This is really important to consider during your layout process – to find a way to balance the text and imagery on the page and so a viewer has time to rest and process the information at hand. Look out for ways to create soft contrast in your designs, say for instance, if you have a big picture on the left-hand side of the page, use some text on the right side to balance the page out and keep it even. As you can see in our example below, the image on the left-hand side has been balanced out with text and the smaller images on the other side of the document.
3. Thumbnail Sketch
When you are in the early stages of any design, avoid detailed sketches as they won’t represent your final outcome. Quickfire small thumbnail sketches to get every possible idea onto the page. You can easily do this in the 100s, especially when designing a logo. Once you won’t exactly what you want, start adding the detail and precision you want.
4. Legibility
Information needs to be clear and legible. Take note of how it will be for the reader to process the information presented. It the content clear and the type big enough? Some pieces of work contain a lot of data making it more difficult for everything to sit together on one page. A great trick is to print out your document or artwork, to witness how it looks physical in front of you, and then make changes where necessary.
5. Organisation
It’s a simple concept but can ruin the order of things for many. Keep the same documents together, use paper clips, binders, boxes, sticky notes, labels, anything to make sure you know where everything is. Best to a avoid the madness.
6. Guidelines
The information received for one design would need to be treated differently to others. If you’re making a logo, you need to know the colours, size, font etc. These elements are there to make sure you consider them.
7. UI Kits
Working on an interface, web or app design. You will need to create a UI Kit, which will highlight every point of the design. Colour, font, weight, background etc.
