Design theory: How to keep your design from becoming tacky

Even if we are shouting the innovation economy every day, the design saves the nation, we in the life also everywhere sees each kind of design vulgar, makes the coarse poster, the storefront, the outdoor advertisement, the big chest beauty and the muscular macho each other, red bottom yellow word and the brain remnants propaganda cartoon to be further. For example, a government transport Department to introduce the representative of the traffic police cartoon image, enough to thunder the vast number of drivers outside the Coke, if met in the streets, I am afraid will be unable to extricate themselves into the crash.

With various design forums, design lectures, design training inside the teachers and students installed very elegant, or not elegant, those rough, tacky design works (some even do not call the works) or flooding in all corners of the urban countryside-the reason, I guess not because the people like, and not just businessmen are wishful thinking, It is most likely because those who are attached to the XXX plane crash, 21-day change Design Master, such as training courses and toilet books. Some ready-made experience or hard work skills, I feel that the end of the direct said, selling the theory we are not good.

So what I'm going to talk about today is "How not to make your design tacky," and how to be good is a big problem, it's a lot of things, but it's a sign of how not to be wrong. Since as a small white you, do not have so much accumulation and experience, then make sure that their work is not a joke, but also a raise it.

To avoid the original authors of certain biased designs (to illustrate the problem, I have to quote your works, of course, in my celestial land, these works are not the worst of the scene of the idea of the mob, in this blog to pull the banner of the protection of the situation occurs, I will do a comparison of each link, the left is a common practice, the right is in the " This "relatively good" approach (rather than a good design) proves that the article is a case in point, not a 3.15 exposure.

1. Too many fonts

Whether you are doing a plane, doing a book, or doing a website, visual Gestalt theory tells us that the same property of a lot of things, people's heart is nervous, for example: You see 20 ants at your feet, you will squat down to see what they are busy, if 200,000 ants are rushing towards you, you besides screaming can have a better way?

The idea of using too many fonts in a limited space is the psychological response. In the use of fonts, the first key is to minimize the type of font, you can use your own font control within 3, if the font must exceed three kinds of how to do? Highlight the most important information by diluting the font of unimportant parts of information by size, spacing, perspective, angle, contrast, and color.

Another technique is the difference between the horizontal and vertical lines of text, according to the different reading habits, in our country horizontal text recognition rate is relatively high, but in the layout of a bit stiff, and vertical effect is more likely to graphic graphics, vertical row of the impact of the number and the letter of the direction of the problem-therefore, not the last resort, Do not use Chinese + English in the text of the mixed way, that is really disgusting.

But is it really bad to have a lot of fonts? Not necessarily, the font itself can be graphical, they also have the discipline of beauty, a large number of character modelling constitutes an "element", at this level, they are out of the image of the font itself. You can search for "typography" in Google, I do not map.

2. Color is too uniform

About the color of the clutter, a lot of articles have been heart-to-heart said, but I have to tell you, color this thing, you light to look at the color wheel, color spectrum, buy point Pantone put on the table is no use, the color is regular, and everyone's color feel no rules, to do color design, in addition to a lot of practice and observation, The most important thing is to trust your intuition, if you do not know how to grasp the color-you first remember the "black and white Gray + main color" way, that is, a main color, through black and white gray to coordinate the logic of the auxiliary color.

Rather than the color clutter, too uniform color is actually causing users more trouble, "use unified color easier to remember" this argument is not very rigorous, the premise is that the color design of this product should conform to the visual feelings of people, first of all, the feeling of harmony, then the possibility of memory, Otherwise the human brain will instinctively repel. The picture I sent above is common in the activities and propaganda of the major "official" bodies, not only the lack of focus, but also the glare-which has repeatedly proved that most of our leaders are blind, which is more frightening than illiteracy.

The difficulty of color unification lies in the distinction of color contrast, including lightness and saturation control, no matter how you want to unify the color, the key information must not be drowned by the color itself.