We hope you enjoyed our 3 designer secrets to mix patterns like a pro. REMEMBER: pay attention to size, incorporate solids and similar styles are visually friendly. If you still need help, our professional designers would love to makeover your home all online in 3-5 business days with a clickable shopping list that you can shop on your own at your own pace. HAPPY DECORATING!
Hadley Mendelsohn is House Beautiful's senior design editor and the co-host and executive producer of the podcast Dark House. When she's not busy writing about interiors, you can find her scouring vintage stores, reading, researching ghost stories, or stumbling about because she probably lost her glasses again. Along with interior design, she writes about everything from travel to entertainment, beauty, social issues, relationships, fashion, food, and on very special occasions, witches, ghosts, and other Halloween haunts. Her work has also been published in MyDomaine, Who What Wear, Man Repeller, Matches Fashion, Byrdie, and more.
Design Secrets of Pro Designers
Become a member of a graphic design community and interact with other like-minded designers. Such communities, forums and social gatherings help you to meet new people, share ideas, knowledge and grow as a professional. This is the best way to get maximum exposure, creating professional relations and gaining abundant knowledge regarding the design field.
Read and get in depth knowledge about color psychology, design concepts, typography, trends and the latest software. Graphic designing is not wild imagination; it is a tamed art that can mold itself according to the needs of an industry. This is what graphic design books, tutorial websites and professional blogs teach you about.
Balance using elements and arranging the work in such a way that not a single design element completely overshadows the other. Balancing content and design keeps the parts working together to be as uniform as possible. Balance does not mean that all the elements must be the same but that the overall weight, or perceived weight, is taken into account.
Using these secrets in graphic design communication is much more than a visual background element for interest. It adds a level of texture to an otherwise dull and boring background. These are most often used as great accents to hypnotize the viewer into an immersive experience.
Repetition within design work is a graphic design secret that helps to create a sense of familiarity and trust. Viewers want a certain degree of predictability within their everyday experience, so the same rule applies here when using design elements, even if its a website or brochure.
Harmony is the use of objects in your design that mirror each other even if the form of design, ie. The color, typography, image, or shapes, but there is a certain level of relationship between the elements. For example, you are using bright yellow display typography paired with a picture of a sunflower field on a bright sunny day. This application of color in an image mirrors echo the overall theme of the color palette.
Swiss graphic designer Felix Pfäffli (opens in new tab) has been nothing short of prolific since graduating and setting up his own design studio, Feixen, in his hometown of Lucerne in 2010. His website displays a wealth of design projects that include magazine and book covers (Computer Arts has commissioned him in the past), T-shirt graphics, custom typefaces and an abundance of posters created predominantly for arts institutions and exhibitions.
The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of six full-time members of staff: Editor Kerrie Hughes, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Deals Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Digital Arts and Design Editor Ian Dean, and Staff Writer Amelia Bamsey, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.
A Minnesota-based graphic design and branding studio specializing in visual branding for small businesses with big hearts. I collaborate one-on-one with you to create a happy, thoughtful, visual brand that helps you elevate your marketing.
Here is an excellent example of a container design in proper proportion. The purple stems of the thriller plant, plectranthus, are highlighted by the purple leaves of the shamrock plant, and the balance and simplicity of the design are quite nice.
Container Garden Design Tip: to keep the plants in any container design in proper proportion with the container itself, be prepared to do some trimming and pinching throughout the season.
Another goal for container garden design is having a single focal point. A focal point can be very direct and obvious, or more subtle. Often the largest plant in your design becomes a natural focal point because of its size alone, but fun focal points can also be based on a jazzy color, bold leaf texture, variegated foliage, or a narrow, vertical element. No matter what you choose, use only one primary focal point for each container. Multiple focal points can be very distracting.
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Whether you're designing a website, a flyer, or an invitation to a birthday party, there will likely come a time when you'll need to know some of the basics of graphic designing to make your design visually appealing. Regardless of the software you use, odds are that you'll be faced with a seemingly infinite number of fonts, clip art, colors and design elements that could potentially be used on your canvas. It's enough to make even the most creative non-designer overwhelmed!
A common mistake non-designers make when designing an invitation, sign, advertisement, web page, etc., is to include several different fonts. In addition to making your text harder to read, using too many fonts makes your design look unprofessional, cluttered and generally unappealing to the eye.
While we are discussing fonts, let's talk about which fonts to use. It's important to understand that the fonts you choose affect the overall message of the design. For example, rounded fonts evoke a friendly, happy feeling while fonts with multiple sharp edges have a stronger, more aggressive feel. In graphic design for marketing, if the service or product being sold is luxurious, the designer might consider using cursive fonts. Basically, choosing the right font involves choosing a font that reflects the message and feel of your overall design.
Designers (including Erik Spiekermann, Dan Mayer, and Jessica Hische) have been known to compare choosing fonts for design projects to choosing an outfit to wear. And it's an apt analogy. Think about what your clothes might say about you: based on what you wear, people might rightly or wrongly make assumptions about your style, your personality, your socio-economic background, your age (or the age you wish you were), or the kind of impression you want to make. And different occasions and situations call for different apparel. You wouldn't wear a bathing suit to a job interview; then again, you wouldn't want to wear a suit and tie during your vacation on the beach either. There's an element of appropriateness to consider.
Remember when we discussed fonts and how to increase or decrease the scale of them for emphasis? The same holds true for any of the elements within your design. The best way to create impact in your message is to pay special attention to the scale and color of your text and its surrounding icons or photos. Poppie Pack, senior graphic designer for Canva, explains it like this:
Overcrowding images and text is another common mistake many non-designers make. And with all of the choices given in design programs, it's an easy thing to do if you're not paying attention. Giving each element a little space to breathe (so to speak) will do wonders in making your design look more professional and easier to read.
Leonardo Da Vinci, the famed painter, sculptor and inventor, once wrote that Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Ask any professional graphic designer and they are likely to tell you that the simple designs are usually the hardest to create. In fact, at the heart of great graphic design is simplicity.
This goes for your images as well as the text you've placed within the design. If there is an element or word that doesn't have to be there, take it out. If your message is short and simple, it is more likely to be read and draw attention.
Again, consider Apple's branding and their use of empty space to draw the eye's attention to their famous logo. Keep in mind that the negative space doesn't need to be literally white but empty space on your canvas is a good thing, so don't feel the need to fill it all with icons or text. The more "stuff" you put on your design, the less powerful it will be. Sometimes, this requires moving different elements around on your canvas to find the best way to create the space. However, as you do this, you'll notice how different elements will draw your attention more based on where the empty space is. 2ff7e9595c
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