Graphic Design Fundamentals PDF

IMAGING AND DESIGN FOR SOCIAL IMPACT The graphic design concepts are almost like building blocks. Each layer is on top of each other before you have the base to create something unbelievable — whether you're creating a logo, a website, or a unique picture. The basic principles of graphic design come...

IMAGING AND DESIGN FOR SOCIAL IMPACT The graphic design concepts are almost like building blocks. Each layer is on top of each other before you have the base to create something unbelievable — whether you're creating a logo, a website, or a unique picture. The basic principles of graphic design come with different fundamentals to consider. In this module, we will explore some of it for us to be able to create a good design. Graphic Design Fundamentals What is Graphic Design? Graphic Design is a process in which we use typography, images, colors, icons and other illustrations to communicate visually. This term was first coined by William Addison Dwiggins on 1992 as he called himself a “graphic designer”. However, graphic design is a thousand-year-old craft which dates back to ancient cave drawings. In today’s era, we use graphic design not just to communicate visually but also to having good user experience (for software developers) and also to boost/improve one’s emotions (with the use of colors). The fundamentals of graphic design vary from PowerPoint presentations, web/mobile applications, posters, logos, and even paintings. The basic elements of graphic design are the following: Lines Shapes Form Texture Balance  Line A line is a kind of shape which connects two or more points. It is also considered as one of the essential elements of graphic design. Lines can be thick, thin, curved, or jagged. Figure 1 shows the different styles of a line. Thick Line Thin Line Curved Line Jagged Line Figure 1. Styles of lines Lines can be used and commonly found in drawings or illustrations, textures or patterns, as well as on text composition – whether to give emphasis, divide or organize content, or to guide the viewer’s eye. Impacts on lines also differs based on their attributes. These attributes include: Weight Color Texture Style Figure 2 Lines used in patterns Shape A shape is a two-dimensional external boundary of an object. Any object outline that has height and width can be considered as a shape. Together with lines, they form the foundation of your design. There are two (2) major categories of shapes in design: Geometric – these are regular and mathematical shapes. Organic – these are freeform shapes. Shapes can be used in organizing or dividing contents, create illustrations, and in adding interest to one’s work/design.  Using shapes in a poster design Form A form is a three-dimensional shape. Shadows, perspective, depth, and sometimes texture creates a form. Without these attributes, a form is just a shape or series of shapes. Plain images/objects and flat designs can be enhanced by adding shadows or lightings to create an illusion of a form. It also gives the object a sense of place. Figure 5 shows that a ball, if you make it two-dimensional is just a circle. Texture Texture refers to the physical quality of the surface of an object in an artwork or design. It also refers to how an object look or feels like. An object might be smooth, rough, shiny, hard, or soft. It can be in 3D (real texture) or 2D (visual texture). Texture adds depth and visual interest to the flat images or objects. Texture can be used for: Establishing visual value or a focal point in an artwork. Having contrast within a design Making an artwork visually balanced. Balance Visual balance is the creation of visual equilibrium by relating elements such as line, shape, color, space or form in terms of their visual weight. Basically, there are two kinds of visual balance: 1. Symmetrical balance. From the name itself, symmetrical balance, which includes radial symmetry is when both two sides of a piece are equal. If you fold your artwork or piece into two or if you put an imaginary line between your artwork, each half is identical or visually similar to the other half. 2. Asymmetrical balance. Both sides of your composition does not contain the same elements but contain almost the same visual weight. Branding and Identity Branding and identity can be found everywhere. Look around you, you may see some of your personal items, product packaging, documents, or some sort of advertising. All of them have one in common – identity. Branding is simply what people thinks about you, your company, your product or your service. For example, we think of Albert Einstein as the epitome of intelligence, and that is how he was branded. Identity or visual identity is the visual representation of a brand. It can be in a form of image, choice of color or typography, and many more. For example, we quickly recognize the company and its service but just looking at its logo, typeface, or color combinations. Let’s cite one example. We can easily associate the school by simple looking at their color combination. For instance, if we see colors red and maroon, we can easily connect it with PUP, or red and green for UP. Branding and identity are not just for products and services, we can even apply it to how we work or what type of output we produce. For example, the use of bright and bold colors are often associated with the famous painter, Vincent Van Gogh. Lucidpress (2018) enumerated the seven steps to creating a brand identity design: 1. Establish clear purpose and positioning. Recall why you or your company exists, who your target audience are, and what makes you or your service unique from your competitors. 2. Conduct thorough market research. Having a deep analysis on your target audience on what their personalities are which will lead you to the next step. 3. Get a personality. Based on your research, determine your brand’s personality. Brand personality make a huge impact on the visuals of your marketing materials. 4. Create a polished logo. In creating your logo, it should be simple, scalable, and memorable. Observe the logos of famous companies like Amazon, Google, and IBM. What do these logos have in common? 5. Create an attractive color pallete. Your color pallete should be simple and contain one to three primary colors. Once you have established your color pallete, you may play with their color family. For example, if you choose blue as you primary color, you may use sky blue, baby blue, and other colors under the blue family to support your primary color. 6. Select professional typography. When selecting fonts, it is important to consider these things: a. Do not make it fancy. Fancy typefaces only make your text confusing. Example: b. Don’t mix fonts/typefaces. Do not mix fonts or typefaces in a word or sentence as it may give mixed interpretations to your audience. Example:  c. Mix contrasting fonts/typefaces. This is not similar to the above item. This means you may use serif typefaces for your product title and sans serif for the subtitle. 7. Choose on-brand supporting graphics. Your brand identity should have a visual library that include icons, images/photographs, design assets, and other supporting graphics. Layout and Composition Layout and composition are the building blocks of design. These two focuses on the arrangement of your objects or elements on your design. Your good texts, images, or other elements in the graphic will turn to waste if your layout is not well-composed. We might be confused sometimes in using lay out instead of layout. Please take note that these two are not the same. Lay out is a verb phrase which simply means to arrange something, while layout is a noun which means how things are organized. There are five basic principles of layout and composition: 1. Proximity 2. White Space 3. Alignment 4. Contrast 5. Repetition Proximity Proximity is the process of placing related elements together. Elements that are not related to that group should be separated to show that these elements are not related to that group. Take family reunion as an example, you are grouped by family, and anyone who don’t have any relationship to your family should be separated. In design, block texts or graphics that are related should be grouped together to make your design easier to understand. White Space White space is not literally the white spaces that you found on the design but rather the negative space between lines, paragraphs, and element on the design. In his article Importance in White Space in Design, Pratik Hedge described white space as: “White Space in design composition is same as use of Silence in a musical composition. Without proportionate use of Silence, music is unstructured; some may call it noise. Similarly, without White Space, design is unstructured and difficult to consume.” There are two types of white space: Micro white space. Mini spaces between paragraphs, lines, menu items, or other elements in a design composition. Macro white space. Large spaces between contents and elements. How important is white space in design? Hedge (2017) listed some of the importance of white space in design. 1. Improved comprehension. Spaces between lines in a paragraph makes the content legible and easily scanable to the readers/viewers.  Figure 3 White spaces makes the content more readable. 1. Focus and attention. Macro white spaces help guide the viewers to the focus area in the design. Figure 4 Screen grab from Apple website 2. Increased interaction rate. If used wisely, white space in design helps the viewer to get the message quickly even without looking at the instructions. Take a look at Google’s homepage UI. White space helps the viewer to get the message, which is to search. Figure 5 Screen grab from Google homepage 3. Guide the user through local grouping. White space helps you to achieve the proximity of your design. 4. Branding and Design Tone. Let us look back at the steps of brand identity design, the way how are you going to apply white spaces in your design helps you create your own brand’s personality.  5. Creates a breathing space for users. A lot of people believe that in design, one must maximize the space by putting contents on it. However, this might make your design stuffy. Having enough white space makes your eye rest, helps us breathe and not to be overwhelmed with the information. Figure 6 Making design with breathable space (right) is better than stuffy design (left) Alignment Alignment helps designers to organize different elements in their composition. This is similar to the alignment that we see in MS Word or other productivity tools. Effective use of alignment give your composition a definitive structure and a creative balance. Alignment may be left, centered, right, or justified. Contrast Contrast means one element is opposite to the other element. This does not only apply to colors, but to typeface and size of elements as well. Contrast helps you to catch the viewer’s eye, create a direction, or giving emphasis to something. For example, if you use dark color for your background, you should use light color for your foreground; or if you use different test style to give emphasis on your content. Repetition Repetition simply means to use of the same typefaces, color palettes, or other elements to achieve consistency in your composition. This create unity in your composition or make your projects connected to each other. For example, if you create a PowerPoint presentation, you should use only the same color palette or text style in all of your slides. Typography Typography is the art of arranging texts that makes it readable and appealing to the viewer. It involves font style, typeface, and text structure. Some people often misuse the term “font” as typeface. So, let us explain first the difference between font and typeface. Font refers to the variation of weights of a typeface, while typeface refers to the text style. Font also refers to the format or storage mechanism of a text like.otf and.ttf. For example, Arial Narrow, Arial Black, and Arial Rounded are fonts under the Arial typeface. “Typeface is to font as song is to.mp3” – Nick Sherman Table 1 shows the difference between a font and a typeface. Table 1 – Difference between font and typeface Font Typeface Types of Fonts Fonts can be categorized into three: Serif San Serif Display Serif Serif fonts are fonts that have little strokes called serif on each end of the letter. They are typically used in formal or traditional projects. Examples of typefaces with serifs are Times New Roman, Baskerville Old Face, and Californian FB.  Figure 7 Serif in letter T (in circles). Sans Serif Sans serif are fonts with no extra strokes. Sans serif simple means “without serifs” as sans is a French word for without. These fonts are normally found in mobile phones, and computer screens. Examples of this type are Calibri, Arial, and Roboto. Display Display fonts are sometimes called as fancy or decorative fonts. It can be script, blackletter or all caps. These types of fonts are used in special occasions like invitations, titles, or posters. Examples of display fonts are Advertising Script, Bangers, and Forte. Choosing a font or typeface Whether you are new or old in graphic design, one dilemma that most graphic designers experienced is on what fonts or typefaces are they going to use. One mistake that beginners commit is the misuse of fonts or typefaces. In choosing a font/typeface, it should portray the message that you want to say to your viewers. In design, fonts and typefaces do matter. Color Colors are very essential to your compositions. One may use a combination or one or more colors. It may be our instinct to choose color but there is a science behind it, called Color Theory. Color Theory describes how different colors contribute to each other and how they appear as they are mixed into other color schemes. Before we proceed to different color schemes, let us go over some terminologies used in color. Hue. Refers to pure, vibrant colors. Saturation. Refers to the intensity of the color. It ranges from black and white (or grayscale) to vibrant color. Value. Refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. For example, from light blue to dark blue. Color Schemes Of course, we can still remember the lessons about color during art lessons. We have primary colors, then secondary colors and tertiary colors. A circular diagram of these colors is called a color wheel. Using this wheel, we can create our own color scheme or combination. Monochromatic Color Scheme This color scheme only focuses on one color, and often using variations by incorporating saturations or values. For example, if you chose the color blue, then you may have other colors under the same color family like sky blue, baby blue, navy blue, or dark blue. Achromatic Color Scheme This color scheme only revolves on using desaturated colors like black, gray, and white. Analogous Color Scheme Analogous color scheme selects a group of three colors that are adjacent in the color wheel. Complementary Color Scheme These are colors that are direct opposite to each other in the color wheel. Usually, a combination of a primary and secondary colors. Split-Complementary Color Scheme Split-complementary color scheme uses the colors on both sides of the opposite color. Triadic Color Scheme This color scheme uses colors that form an equilateral triangle. It may be a combination of primary, secondary, or tertiary colors. Tetradic Color Scheme Also known as double complementary. This color scheme uses two pairs of complementary colors. Understanding Color Profiles Whenever we open an image editing application or buy a printer ink at the store, we may observe labels like RGB or CMYK. So, what are they? They are color profiles that we need to consider if we create designs. RGB. This color profile consists of Red, Green, and Blue. You should use this profile for design that are intended for screen displays. CMYK. This color profile consists of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black). If you have a printer in your house, you probably see these colors as inks. This profile is intended for designs that are to be printed.  Image Images are not just limited to photographs, it also includes graphics, and other illustrations. Having images on your composition makes it appealing to the eyes of your viewer. Take magazine as an example, imagine that your favorite magazine contains no image. You do not want to read it right? That is the power of images – they are not just decorations on your composition. Finding and placing the right image is not a difficult thing as long as you know what kind of image you are going to use in your composition. Do you remember using clip arts on your project designs? If yes, then I encourage you to not use it today as we are over with the clip art era. Stock photos are now popular in any project. Most people are now relying on stock photos as they are free or sometimes cost less. There are various stock image websites all over the internet. The only thing that you need to do is to choose pictures/images for your composition. Image File Types There are different file types of images, and they are grouped into two categories: vector and raster. Vector. It is a type of image that does not lose its quality when zoomed in. Your image will not be pixelated when enlarged. Raster. Opposite to vector, raster images become pixelated when enlarged. Vector Image File Extensions Encapsulated Postscript (EPS). This vector format is designed to produce highresolution graphics for print. Being a universal file type, EPS files can be opened in any design editor.  Adobe Illustrator Document (AI). Most preferable and commonly used image file type by designers. If you want to create a vector image, AI is one of the best tools for you. Raster Image File Extensions Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG or JPEG). This file type is the most commonly used image file type. Since this is a raster type of image, JPEG images are known for their “lossy” compression. Meaning, the image quality decreases when being enlarged. Portable Network Graphics (PNG). This file type is known for having a transparent background. Images in this type are commonly used in web documents. Graphics Interchange Format. This file type is known in its animated form. You can find them in social networking sites as posts or comments. GIFs are often used in web pages as can load quickly due to its reduced file size.