Have you ever visited a website with expectations about what you would find only to discover that site held none of the information you were looking for? That site might have had exactly what you’re interested in, but there was no clear path to find it. The site may have been organized in such a way that led you to believe it was about something other than what you were hoping to find.
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Have you ever been walking a paved path through a park and come across an unpaved shortcut? The shortcut was clearly not designed by the developers of the park, but it’s clearly a route people before you have taken and it’s clearly a quicker way to get from point A to point B. Do you take the unpaved path?
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Images of people draw our attention. However, different images with different people will affect us differently.
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One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.
It is easy to despise what you cannot get.
—The Fox and the Grapes (Aesop’s Fables)
People are physically, psychologically, and socially influenced by color. Color has been found to have connections to health and it can help set the mood through which your designs are seen.
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Color is the most relative medium in art
—Josef Albers
We all perceive light and color differently. What you see as red is different than what I see as red, though we’ll both call it red. How color affects us and how we react to it is also different for each of us. Color is relative.
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When you first come across a new design where does your eye go? What’s the first thing you see on the page? Where in the design is your attention drawn? The answer to all three questions is one of dominance.
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When your first impression of a design is positive, when you instinctively see the design as being good, it’s likely because one or more Gestalt principles of perception are at play. When you look at a design and admire one or two of it’s parts, it’s likely because those parts are adhering to one or more Gestalt principles.
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A house divided against itself cannot stand
—Abraham Lincoln
The house Lincoln was referring to was the United States of America shortly before the Civil War. As Lincoln put it, the country was half slave and half free. Two very different messages about what the country stood for. Lincoln further said about the country
It will become all one thing or all the other.
We know now which “all” the country did become and I hope we all agree the U.S. became the right “all.”
Lincoln’s point reaches beyond the socio-political climate of the time. A house, the United States, a design can not stand when divided. Every part must be working toward the same unified goal.
In design working toward the same unified goal is the idea of unity.
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Before solving complex design problems you need to understand the basic components of design at your disposal. Much as a musician seeks to understand pitch and rhythm, melody and tempo, a designer should seek a greater understanding and control over:
