Graphic Design Theory - Psychology of Design

1. Introduction: What makes learning about design theory difficult is that everything is related. It is hard to talk about a single rule principle or element without referring to others. This is what has inspired me to put together my most comprehensive and accessible training series ever, covering everything you need to know about graphic design theory. 20 years of experience applying these theories in my work as a creative professional and teaching them to students around the world, has helped me to come up with a unique approach explaining everything without ever making you feel overwhelmed. We will analyze and compare real examples of print, web, and mobile designs to help you build a mental visual library of great compositions. By the end of this series, you will be able to recall lots of creative examples from memory. You will also master how to analyze designs and learn to ask the right questions when judging your own compositions. Whether you are a seasoned creative professional or just starting out as a graphic designer, you will find the courses in this series incredibly interesting, inspiring, and valuable. Boost your confidence by understanding how to make engaging, clear and effective compositions. And learn the language of design in order to communicate with clients, printers, developers, and other creative professionals. In this course, we will cover all the guest out principles including closure, continuity, similarity, simplicity, figure ground, and so much more. To find out how they can be utilized in graphic design projects. By understanding these universal laws of visual communication, you will gain confidence and find it easier to make decisions throughout the whole design process. Together with the exciting class project that I hope you will complete at the end of the course. You also have the analysis worksheet and the term glossary to help you practice everything that you've learned. I hope you are just as excited as I am to get started and dive into the sea of knowledge and beautiful graphic design examples. 2. What are the Gestalt principles?: I like to think of the guest style principles as the grammar of visual communication. Every language around the world relies on grammar which sets the rules, creates consistency, and make sure that everyone can understand each other. It's interesting, but if you think about it, we don't actually learn in school how to understand things when we look at them. So visual perception is almost instinctive. It's something that we learn as we grow up. And even as a newborn, we already start to process our environment by looking at it. Of course, at the beginning of our life we use our other senses more like touching and tasting things. But as we grow older, we end up relying more and more on our eyes to understand our environment and to be able to interact with it. Apparently, almost 50% of our brain is dedicated purely to process the visual stimuli that we are constantly bombarded with during daytime. And even while we are asleep, our brain projects images which we understand as dreams. And I like to think of dreams being some kind of exercise for the brain. So even when we are looking at things, it is trying to flex those muscles that we are using when we are again looking at things and trying to understand what we are seeing. So coming back to the guesttop principles and why it is important to learn about it. Remember I said that we don't have to learn how to see things. That's completely true, however. As a designer or graphic designer, we need a better understanding how people will perceive the designs that we create to be able to effectively communicate the message that the project is about. In this video, I'm going to give you a brief background where the gestal principles are coming from. And we will briefly analyze this Unilever logo on the board just to see how the Gesto principles can be applied to any kind of design. In the following videos, we will be looking at all of these principles in much more detail and we will be looking at many, many examples to make sure that you understand how to implement them in your designs. So first of all, guest principles are actually coming from the area of psychology. It started by three psychologists in Austria and Germany in the early 20th century. And the most important quote that sums up really well the whole idea behind gastutism by Kurt Kofka, who said the whole is other than the sum of its parts. And the word other is very important, so it's not more like Aristotle said, but it is something else or something different. You can see the example of the bicycle when we have all of its parts laid out and when we have it all put together, even though it's the same exact components with the right configuration or assembly, it will be able to carry us from A to B. It becomes a vehicle. And that is something we definitely can't say about all of its parts separately or just laid out like this, only once they are put together in the right way. And this is a great analogy to think about design as well. Whether you have typography, images, shapes, colors, contrast, so on and so forth. You can use all of these things, but if you're not putting them together correctly or effectively, then your design won't look good or won't get the attention of viewers. Only when you put everything together in the right balance, the right order or right hierarchy, that's when you will create an effective design. There's another important underlying term used in the guest style principles called emergence. And essentially what this means is that we tend to look at the entire object before seeing its individual parts. So again, thinking as a graphic designer, that means that if you create a poster, for instance, people will look at the poster in its entirety before they start to look at smaller details like people in the poster or the title or subtitle, and so on, so forth. And why is it important? Because for us designers, we have to always create a pleasing composition or overall look of our design. But we also have to make sure that people will be able to find all the relevant information once they spend a bit more time looking at what we created. 3. Gestalt principles in action: So looking at the current design of the Uni Liver logo, we can immediately pick up a couple of the Guestyle principles that are applied here. Like simplicity, which is also referred to as law of pregnants, which we can see in all of these little icons here. They are all simplified almost to abstraction. But if we pay attention, we can still make out and recognize a couple of things here. Like there is a little e here. We also have a bird, there is a pepper, there is a palm tree, There is a symbol, which is for recycling. There's another symbol, the heart, which can be interpreted as love. But in this context, it's more likely to indicate healthy products. So why do you think it was important to apply the rule of simplicity to all of these icons in this logo? Well, if you think about it, if they were too complex and there were too much details on them, it would end up becoming too complex and distracting. And definitely it wouldn't work as a logo. Unilever is a massive company with so many brands inside it. And to be able to communicate that complexity, the designer decided to highlight many aspects of these brands without them becoming too overwhelming or overpowering. And this takes us to the other rule that's applied here, which is called figure ground. Which means that we can look at something like this shape here as a unified outline of the letter U. So that is something that we would understand as the ground or background, and all of the little icons inside it are the figures or the foreground elements. The figure ground rule is a little bit more tricky to understand, so you will understand it much more once we look at more examples about it. Now, since there's so many little icons packed into this shape of the U, there's also a couple of additional rules applied to make it aesthetically pleasing. One of which, which is quite obvious is similarity. So basically that means that all of these icons feel similar to each other, so they all use the same color. They all have round edges, so there's no sharp corners in either of them. And if you pay attention to the icons, they all seem to be following the shape of the U. So that is something that we call common fate. They all feel like going or flowing in the same direction. And another interesting thing that we can see here is that it wasn't necessary to create a solid outline for the letter U, for it to look like it's closed. So we perceive it as a close shape even though it has gaps around it. And that is a perfect example. And use of the guest style principle called closure symmetry is another rule that we can see here. So if we have this line here in the middle, you can see that not only the letter U is aligned to that, but even the text at the bottom is symmetrically aligned to the letter above it. This helps to create a pleasing balance in this composition. And if we're looking at the text itself, here at the bottom, There's also another rule applied there, which is called continuation or continuity. Where again, our brain can easily connect this and understand it as a single word even though there are gaps in between the letters. Now this works well mainly because this looks like a handwritten text or manuscript. While if this text was set in different type face, like a Serif or Sunserifont, then it would already cause issues if we had these big gaps between those letters, especially if these gaps are uneven. And finally, one other rule that we can see being used here is proximity, which in this case connects the letter mark which we have here on the top and the word mark that we have underneath it. So the closeness of these two elements and the fact that they are stacked on top of each other, We'll have to always see this as a single unit, a logo, even when it's placed on an advert, for instance, together with the logos of other brands. So to summarize, the importance of guest out principles is that as a designer, you need to be able to emphasize visual relationships. And you can only do this effectively by understanding how your viewers will interpret or perceive the visual information that you are presenting to them. So I hope you are excited because now we will take a much closer look at each of the rules in the guest style principles. And don't worry if you feel a bit overwhelmed at this point. It will all make much more sense once we go through and analyze the designs in the upcoming videos, and really concentrate on individual principles each time. 4. Closure: Closure is one of the simpler rules amongst the Gestalt Principles, which means that when you look at an image that has some missing details, your brain can easily and automatically fill those gaps for you. For this rule to work, it is important that you have to find the right balance. If you are leaving out too much or there's too much missing details, then your viewers might end up seeing them as independent details and struggle to understand the design. And on the other hand, if you provide too much information, then there won't be any need to fill the gaps, so your design won't be as engaging or interesting to look at. Let's look at this illustration here on the left first, The important visual details here that really help to understand what we are looking at are these common details that we can very quickly understand like the shoes, the skateboard, the hair and the hand. Even though that everything is highly stylized or simplified, we can still understand them. And once we've seen these couple of details, this pattern of dots without a solid outline starts to make sense as being the dress that this female character is wearing. Pay attention to how there's almost no details for the face, so we can't really see eyes or the nose. Maybe a tiny little indication of the ear was enough to understand what we are looking at. So having some solid details that are completely filled with black, like the shoes, the hair, and also the skateboard, which has a clear outline, is enough to hold everything together. And once again, to understand that floating pattern that doesn't have any contour or outline. And you might be wondering why was it necessary to leave out the outline? And a simple answer to that is to make it engaging or exciting to look at when closure is used. Well, in a design, it usually challenges the viewer, gives them something to think about. It's almost like a little visual riddle that you have to solve in order to understand what you're looking at. Now in this particular illustration, there's lots of other rules as well in play, like motion or movement, which we can again, see clearly when we look at the hair, for instance, which indicates a forward motion because we know that long hair would fall down vertically. And when we see hair horizontally displayed, then we immediately understand that there must be some kind of motion. Or maybe there is just wind blowing from the right. Another guest stop principle, common fate, however, helps us to connect some of these details together and understand the motion or the direction of this motion. Not only the hair, but also the leg is stretched out to the back, and the arm is also pointing in that direction. So all of these details together helps us to connect everything and understand that there is actually a fast forward motion here. Even though that this is a completely static image. We will talk a lot more about movement and how we can indicate it in our designs. Once we get to the topic called balance, let's take a look at the example of the Johnny Walker logo. Which evolved and changed quite a lot from the original illustration, but still managed to preserve the original aesthetics of the design. So besides the obvious simplification of details, the most important rule that helped to make this logo more effective is the use of closure. Quite a lot of details here are just floating in space. But again, thanks to their proximity or closeness, we can very quickly connect these missing details and understand that we are looking at pants or trousers here, even though there's no contour on them. Now it's interesting that there was another version which was even more abstract, where even the hand was missing and there was even less details around the head. But this version probably pushed the rule of closure a little bit too far. And they left a little bit too much details out for it to be easily recognized. And most likely that's why they decided to change it and bring back a little bit more details. So this is a great example where we can see how big brands like Johnny Walker is fine tuning the use of closure. I love the poster of this movie called The Lobster, where we can see Colin Farrell hugging something, but we can't really make out what it is because it's completely missing. So this is what we would refer to as negative space. But in this case, it's more about applying the rule of closure because our mind immediately tries to fill this gap and recognize what is removed from the image. And there are some very subtle visual clues of the missing detail. If you pay closer attention to this area here, we can actually see that there are some details of hair. So that is a great hint that there is actually a woman most likely who is removed here or a person with long hair. And remember what we said about balance or finding the right amount of details to show and the right amount of details missing here. The hands are incredibly important because without them, it would be much harder to understand what we are looking at. The hands are mainly needed for us to understand that there is a hug here. But they also act as a framing device that really creates that sense of space or depth. And this composition reminds me of Pantomime, where again, artists just use thin air to describe what they are interacting with. The logo of the World Wildlife Fund is also a brilliant example of Us closure, where we can immediately recognize the panda bear even though there are some missing details again around the contour. Thanks to mainly those characteristic details that are still visible, like the patches around the eyes and the big ears and all of these curvy shapes. What further helps our brain to close those missing details is the way that this detail here, and also this other one here on the right, is gradually getting thinner. So it's not a continuous thickness, but it actually has a nice transition from thick lines to thinner, pointy edges. This transition, or gradual change in the thickness, really creates a motion or flaw in the design. And it further emphasizes the shape of the bear. So we can very clearly see those missing details for the head and also for the body. And I love this funny example here on the right, which is clearly not the updated version of this logo, but showing how a polar bear could look like in the same visual style. But of course, here again, the tuning of closure went too far. Just too much details left out for this to really work effectively as a logo. When we see the two versions next to each other, of course it's easy to understand what the image is about, but imagine seeing this on its own. Well, I'm sure you can imagine that it won't really work as a logo. There is also a term called ratification or reification which describes this whole idea of closure and how our brain and eyes have the tendency to fill the gaps wherever there's missing contours or outlines. And although there are so many other really good examples here. Finally I just wanted to highlight this poster or design where we can see that closure can be used in an extreme way as well. Where we don't even actually show any outlines of the subject of our design, which in this case is this missing piece of art, which is only surrounded by details, the three hands and the text here on the top left corner of that missing piece. But when you think about it here, there's actually no outlines used at all for that detail. So even though it's quite extreme use of closure, it still works mainly because all four corners of this rectangular shapes have some kind of detail that holds it together. Just imagine removing one of these hands, the composition would immediately fall apart. 5. Continuity: Continuity is another principle which is all about connecting dots. Again, this is something that our mind does automatically. So basically we like to see things arranged in a row or a line or a curve, and that is just pleasing to the eye and also easier for us to understand. That is the reason why we like seeing trees planted in a row in a garden, or arranging clothes in a dressing room in the same order as we would wear them, having hats on the top and shoes at the bottom shelf. Even though there's no real logical reason to place them in this order, it just creates an aesthetically pleasing combination and helps our mind to connect these items together or the trees that were planted in a row. It is an instinct for us to follow a river, a path, or a fence. And that's exactly what we like to see in designs as well. So whenever there is an invitation, a path for our eyes to follow, we will most likely do so As a graphic designer, continuity is an amazing tool which can help you to really direct your viewer's eye from one point to another within your designs. And you can think of it as a similar visual challenge to closure you set for your viewers. You invite them and give them something to think about by leaving some details out, or maybe matching different things together, but having a continuation between them before we start analyzing some amazing designs on this board. Here is a very interesting example. We see a couple of dots, some of them are red, others are black. And even though having these colors clearly separate them from each other, still most people would look at this or understand it as a straight and a curved line. Instead of following the dots by their color, we prefer to follow their shape. Here is a straight line and here is a curve line. It's much more pleasing for our mind to connect these dots in this way compared to having a shape like that and another shape like that. This actually explains or leads to a very important discovery that abrupt changes are never good in general in your everyday life, but also in graphic design. For instance, when we look at this image at first our mind prefers to look at these two people in this way. While of course, actually there's a person here on the top and there's another person at the bottom. Simplifying this, we can also imagine a triangle here on the top and another triangle at the bottom. And this is the point where the abrupt change is happening both on the top and on the bottom. Or here's another example. If we look at these arrows, even though this is a two dimensional image, we still feel like there is a sense of depth and space here, thanks to the way these lines are laid out. But more importantly, these curves here are created with a nice gradual transition from going down here to going up to the top of that bump. We have that gradual transition in the thickness and direction of the lines. And the change in these attributes prepares us and helps us to understand the change in the direction. So imagine if these lines were completely straight, and then another line would appear besides them, it would be much harder for us to perceive them as continuous lines or to see the continuity in them. Your job as a graphic designer, of course, as always, is once you understand the rule is to challenge it or turn it into a challenge for your viewers. What makes this composition interesting is that instead of just displaying a portray, the designer split it up into the separate slices. But because they are stacked on top of each other, our mind can still easily combine them together. And I'm sure in your head, you are also automatically visualizing all of these details dropping onto each other and forming the actual head. Here is another very similar example where again, instead of seeing the full portray, we just see parts of it. And what makes this interesting is really the fact that we have this ribbon, continuous single line that forms the whole shape. So we can easily trace it along, you can really see that it's a simple shape, almost like the skin from a potato that has been peeled in one piece. And the continuity of this ribbon, what helps our eye to connect everything and also what makes the whole piece interesting. 6. Continuity in typographic posters: An important rule of typography is legibility. So making sure that people can read whatever is written in a design. However, titles or larger text can always be made more interesting if you are leaving out or covering some details from them. This design is the perfect example where the text jungle is written in much larger than the rest of the copy. And because of its scale and also its high contrast from the rest of the details, it works and reads perfectly well, even though there's quite a lot covered by the foliage details in the composition. If you pay close attention, you will see every single letter of the word jungle has some of its parts covered by overlapping details. So there's something here on the letter J, there's a quite big chunk here covered on the letter U. Also, there's another detail here, another one there, and another one there. And by the way, these floral motifs are also using the rule of continuity. So here is a lovely detail that goes up and it connects not only the word book to the word jungle, but also the letters of jungle, which are separated in these two separate roles. The same branch that comes up here also has another branch that is twisting around, the letter U. This is another beautiful use of continuity. First starting at the bottom of the composition, then coming up, turning around, and then coming up again. It's twisting around the letter U and it creates a sense of continuity, but also adds some depth to the design. And the same applies to all of the other details, like this branch here, again, has a nice continuous curve. And our eyes can easily follow these type of curves and understand it as a single element even though it's divided by the letter. And similarly, we understand the letter as one object even though it's interrupted by those floral elements. This poster is another brilliant example of how you can challenge your viewers here. The task obviously is to be able to read the text, which is again, broken up into multiple lines. More lines than the actual amount of words. So it's only three words, but there's five lines. So that arrangement of text would already challenge the viewers a bit to understand what the text is. But the viewers are further challenge by seeing this bell arena here, intertwining or interlocking into the typography. And if that was not enough already, they actually even left out the body, or the central part of the body of this ballerina, where we would expect to see the white dress that they would normally wear. But this is where our mind comes in. And because we understand the proportions of the human body really well, because we see it all the time, every day, we immediately understand that these details here on the top must be connecting somehow to the legs underneath. For this composition to work, it was very important to make sure that the distance between the details here at the bottom and the details on the top must be the same as in the original photograph. If they were moved further away from each other or maybe moved closer to each other, the whole thing would feel awkward and strange to look at. So to recap, there are three different ways that we are challenged here. In terms of continuity, we have to, first of all, connect the rows of text together. We are also challenged by having quite a substantial part of the text covered by details of the ballerina. So we have to imagine those missing details in these letters. And third, we also have that big missing detail of the ballerina. So the lesson here and what I'm really trying to get to is that when you take a single rule, in this case continuity, you can not only use it once in your composition, but you can have it used multiple times to really emphasize it or exaggerate it to a point that it's still recognizable. So remember to fine tune these things and don't go too far with them, because then you will lose your viewers and they won't understand what they're looking at, or they will be just confused, and that's never a good thing. So for instance, with this design, even though there's quite a lot of details missing from these numbers, it's still almost immediately recognizable. And we can read them. And we can also understand that these most likely are representing dates. And this composition, just like the others before, also heavily relies on continuation or continuity. Our mind will easily be able to connect these details even though there's gaps between them. Not only the numbers are using the rule of continuity, but also these shapes or blobs set in red. Instead of just having a couple of dots, there are actually connected pieces here. So we can see a continuation here and also another one here. And also between these two dots there, you might ask, why was it necessary to connect these red dots besides making the numbers more legible inside them? Well, mainly because they are guiding the viewer's eyes in the direction that these numbers are supposed to be red. For the dates to make sense, we need to start here on the top left and then go to this number here. Then we can continue down here. And this line here actually is also quite important because that's the one that divides the two dates. So again, these dots are leading our eyes down here. Once we see the dot there, we can go up and finish off reading this number together with the dot. Without these four dots, again, the whole design would fall apart and we wouldn't be able to really make sense of these numbers. So those dots or full stops are just as important as the numbers themselves. And now, if you just concentrate on those connected shapes, they really help you to follow along these important details in the composition in the perfect order. 7. The Figure-ground rule: One of the most interesting or intriguing gestalt principle has to be the figure ground relationship. Figure is usually the subject of the image and ground is the environment or the background. But it can have a lot of different interpretations. But the best way to specify what figure is in a composition is to refer to it as the element that is in focus. The ground, as I said, is the background or environment within which this figure or subject, or focal point is resting or placed into. The unique thing about this relationship is that our brain automatically or instinctively tries to keep the figure in the foreground or expect the figure or subject to be in the foreground. Here's an interesting example. When we look at this simple abstract illustration, we would automatically think of those squares being the subject regardless of their color. We would consider the white square in that black rectangle being the subject or figure. And the same way we would consider this black square, again, the figure within the ground that in this case is white. What we can learn from this very simplified example is that most of the time, we would expect the figure to be smaller than the ground. Of course, there can be exceptions or you can intentionally work against this way of understanding what's the figure and the ground. There's another important term worth mentioning when we talk about the figure ground relationship, and that's multi stability or multi stable perception, which is that strange experience when you look at something and it keeps popping back and forth. So in this case, for instance, you can look at this cube, which by the way, is called the Necker Cube, as this face being closer to you and the rest of the cube receding into space. But if you look away and look back, you might end up seeing this face being closer to you and the rest of the cube again receding into space. By considering this phase being closer to us, it's like looking at the cube from below. While when we consider this phase to be at the front, we are looking at the cube from above. This special type of view that gives us a representation of a three dimensional object in a two dimensional plane is called isometric view, where all the lines that recede into space are parallel to each other. Compared to when we see things in perspective where all parallel lines would converge in a vanishing point. We will talk a lot more about perspective and exxonometric views because these are all very important to understand for a graphic designer. But this is part of another topic, so focusing on the figure ground relationship. Here is another very interesting example. The Rubin was where again, we have this sensation of multi stability, where we can look at this image as a cup or vase. But perhaps immediately you've seen these two faces here on both sides. So in this case, our understanding of figure ground is challenged because we can't really decide whether the faces are the figure or the subject or the vase. So if we consider the faces to be the figure, then we see the black field as the background. However, if we consider the vase to be the subject or figure, then it means that we see it within a white environment or background. You might be wondering whether multi stability is actually a good thing or not and whether you should apply this in your designs or not. The answer is that, of course, it can be utilized and it can be turned into a positive and good thing. But if you're not careful on how you are using it, it might end up just annoying your viewers. So here is a great example of multi stability, where we have Batman upside down, or the silhouette of Batman and the silhouette of Penguin or Copa Pot, one of the famous villains from the DC Comics universe. The reason why this composition works so well is because the illustrator or designer really understands how the figure ground relationship works. So first of all, just like seeing the smaller object being the figure, we also normally consider the brighter and more saturated details to be the figure. Because objects tend to get darker and more desaturated as they go further in space. So that's why at first glance, almost everyone would consider this being the figure. And that is why it was smart to have this one standing normally, so head on the top and then the body below it. Because that's just simply the natural or expected way that we would see a character in an illustration. But then the fact that Batman Silhouette is black, of course, works well with the character itself, because Batman wears a black cape. But then again, the fact that he is upside down works perfectly well with the way he behaves in the story. It is another brilliant example of a minimalist illustration which can help us to understand another term that's worth remembering. It is called lower region. And this is another one of those instinctive things where we would consider out of two regions that are separated by a horizontal line. The lower region to be closer to us or the lower region to be the figure. So even though there's not much detail in this illustration and it's very abstract, we still immediately can understand that we are looking at a beach with a boat. So this is our figure and it's in the foreground while we have the sea and an island in the background. And remember what we said that the brighter details are again expected to be closer to us than the darker details that is also applied here. And thus making it easier to understand what we are looking at. 8. Additional examples of multistability: Now here's a few examples of achromatic compositions where we have only black and white details. And all of these posters, again, play with that multi stability factor. But most likely, you would first recognize the shapes or silhouettes of the objects that are in white. So it's the legs here, or the face and the body on this one and the fork on this third poster. But once you pay attention to what you first perceived as the background or these black details, then you can also start seeing them being the figure. So here we see the hand, also the hand here, and the wine bottles in this example. In these first two examples, this multi stability was a great way to grab the attention of viewers and draw their attention to these very important issues, sexual harassment and domestic abuse. While in the case of the third poster, it's a little bit less harsh. It's just a very clever poster that combines the two important details for this topic or event that this poster was created for. So it is a food and wine festival and we can immediately see the food which is referred to by using the fork in the illustration. And then we can see the wine, of course, through the bottles. And I think there is a reason why they decided to have the fork in white. I believe there is a way to follow the same order, the way the title is written. So we have food and wine because we have the fork in white, that's the first thing we see, food. And then we see the bottles, which is the second word in the title, simply just by knowing which color people will see. First, we already established the visual order or hierarchy in which people will be interacting with this design. I love this composition because it challenges us. And again, it shows really well how figure ground relationship can be used to make a design or illustration, in this case, more interesting. So when you look at this, clearly, the focal point is the cat. But which cat? Well, this here is the exact same silhouette and even size to what we see here. It is just different in color and obviously its position in the composition. But it probably took you a little bit of time to figure out which one is the cat and which one is the shadow. And the reason why it's not immediately obvious which one is which is because there is only this single line here that suggests the source of light coming from the top right. And which would explain the shadow to be cast in this direction. Normally in a photograph or even a bit more complex illustration, we would have a lot of suggestions of the light and how the shadows are formed. While here, it is really intentionally just that single line, which again, is a great way to challenge the viewer. The logo of Pittsburgh Zoo is another brilliant example of utilizing the figure ground principle. Where most likely, first you will see the tree, but then eventually you will notice the silhouettes of these two animals, the gorilla and the lion. If you spend a little bit more time analyzing the logo, you will also notice these birds here on the top and the fish here at the bottom. So there's actually one plant and four animals here, even though at first you most likely only see the plant. I also love this illustration of Olimos where again, we are challenged to decide what is the subject of figure and what is the ground. Because we have an immediate understanding of the character of Sheer Khan, the tiger. And you would like to consider it to be the subject of figure within the composition. However, soon you will notice that these stripes are actually representing a very important story from The Jungle Book, where Mowgli is meeting the snake car and getting hypnotized by it. So what at first just seemed like, the stripes on the tiger becomes the subject or figure, and the tiger itself becomes the ground. And remember we said that smaller things instinctively feel like the figure while here mowgli and are really small compared to the rest of the composition. So this just further emphasizes that controversy or multi, stability of deciding which one is the figure and which one is the ground. I love this illustration as well. In the background we have a bottle and the wine or whatever liquid this is is pouring out of it. Then if we start following these lines, they lead us to the interesting detail in the composition where we have challenged and confused to see that this might actually be a carpet or maybe it is a canyon. Here, there are not two, but three different perceptions that we can switch back and forth to the spilled wine, the carpet, and the canyon. Similarly to this, this illustration about monsters ink is also a very smart one where even though there's only a single use of color, green on this yellowish background manages to create three layers and make us see the three most important characters from the story. Of course, it also helps that most Disney and Pixar animations would have very recognizable silhouettes for all the characters. But still, I love the fact that the head of the little girl is perfectly aligned to where we would expect to see that big eye or eyeball of this monster. And not only that, even these little horns here also double as the teeth or those big tusks of the monster sully in the background. So this once again, is a brilliant example of using that figure ground relationship. But the same outline represent different things depending on how we look at it and understand it. 9. Common fate: Common Faith is an interesting principle that we can use to associate different details and make them feel like they are connected or they are related to each other if it's used properly, even if the elements are different in size or color or shape, they can still feel connected as long as they're moving in the same direction or they're placed on the same trajectory. This poster is a great example where common faith is utilized, where we can see all of these people from above. And normally from this viewpoint, it is very hard to tell in what direction they are moving compared to seeing them from the side. But because they end up being more crowded around here immediately, if we feel like that most of these people are moving in that direction. Now this relies on our understanding and experience of crowds gathering. It would normally mean that people are coming from all kinds of different directions, but they end up going to the same place. Think of queuing up at the stadium or concert. Now what makes this composition even more brilliant is the fact that the actual information, both the date, the name, and the location of this festival is compressed into this tiny little space on the top right corner. Which is an unusual placement for the information, because normally we would expect it to be somewhere in the middle, or maybe here on the top left. But by having the common faith utilized and these invisible lines all pointing towards that part of the design, it still manages to be a very strong focal point. Plus we also get that feeling or sensation that this festival is really popular and a lot of people will be attending. This illustration is another good example of how we can achieve interest by simply placing a couple of floral elements or decorations around this text. And again, utilizing common fate by having them all pointing towards the center to make everything in this composition feel in harmony and united. This poster that tries to raise awareness about the plastic waste in oceans manages to communicate a very complex issue with simple silhouettes of a couple of objects. So we have a dolphin here on the right side, and then we have all this plastic waste flowing into the direction of the mouth. Meaning that it's a huge danger that all of this waste is going to end up in the bellies of these animals. And obviously it will cause their death. So the common fate in this case is utilized by having all of these items on the same trajectory. So even there is some randomness between them, they all seem to be pointing towards this one point here. And they also converge from a larger space into that smaller space here. So we have those two curves meeting at this point, which is obviously the focal point of the composition. And by the way, it is a very clever placement because it is also a rule of thirds intersection point here. And if you're not familiar with that term, we cover it in great detail within the composition topic. And finally, another example where common fate is used to separate two different meanings within the same composition. So while we have the vertical placement or positioning of these wine bottles, we have the diagonal placement of their shadows. And these are actually not the shadows of the bottles, but the shadows of famous landmarks. Normally, we would look at an object and pair it together with its shadow. So in that way, we would pair, again, this bottle with its shadow. In this case, there's actually more connection or relationship between the shadows themselves. To achieve this right way of grouping things within the composition is once again achieved by having them going in the same direction or pointing to that direction, while the bottles are all set in a more vertical position, pointing upwards, helping them again to feel more connected to each other than their shadows. There's a lot of other great examples of common faith displayed on this board. And I would like you to analyze them and try to see how they are utilized and what they emphasize within each of these compositions. 10. Simplicity: Simplicity is another one of those principles that's very easy to understand and it feels obvious. However, there's a little bit more to it than at first, you might think. It is actually very challenging for every graphic designer, especially who's just starting out to keep that work simple in most professions. To be honest, the simpler something has to be, the harder you have to work for it. This might sound strange at first, but if you think about it, for something to be simple, it has to really only have the most essential details or information while still being aesthetically pleasing. When we talk about graphic design, of course, but this applies to almost everything, even product design, everything starts out being complex. And then through iteration, we get to simpler and simpler versions until there is nothing left to remove or simplify. A term that also comes originally from product design is also something that I like to apply in graphic design. It's called Kiss, which stands for keep it simple, stupid. Or keep it short and simple. This is a great guideline that you can keep in mind whenever you are designing something. So essentially you want to create something that everyone can understand and their experience with your work, whether it's print or web based, is going to be seamless and painless. Simplicity in graphic design can always help you to clarify your message and allow you to get your viewers attention and their understanding of your message much faster compared to when you present them with more complex designs. Less is more is another thing that we keep on saying in design. And that's just another way of explaining how important simplicity is. So even if it feels contradictory, it's actually true that by removing elements and complexity from your work, make it more impactful. And believe me, one of the most common mistakes of designers who are just starting out is that they overcomplicate their work. They are trying to introduce way too many elements and components in their work, which only diminishes the message that they are trying to communicate. The difference between complexity and simplicity in graphic design can simply just be the introduction of an additional type phase or one additional color that's not in harmony with the rest of the palette. So it is very easy to stray from the path of simplicity and be tempted to add more and more elements or components in your work. Simplicity, like all the other guest of principles, has something to do with how our brain works and how we perceive visual information. It is generally true to everyone around the world that we prefer to see things that are simple, clear, and ordered. That's because we instinctively feel that these things are safer. When we see a complex and unfamiliar shape, our brain immediately strives to make sense of it by breaking it down into smaller and simpler components. Almost everyone who would look at this strange silhouette here on the left side would immediately see the rectangle, the ellipse, and the triangle inside it, even though we don't have their contours defined. When we look at the logo of the Olympic Games, again, almost everyone would immediately see that these are five circles connected to each other. This, again, feels obvious, but if you think about it, there is no clear distinction between these shapes and they are completely connected at these intersection points. So we don't actually have any visual information whether these are really independent circles put on top of each other. Or maybe this is just a complex or compound shape that's made up of these larger and smaller regions. So if I show you the same exact arrangement of circles in a slightly different format, your mind, again, will have to do a little bit of work to figure out what's going on here. But again, usually it only takes a split second for us to recognize the circles. And even though it looks different, we again try to make sense of this and simplify as much as possible. What we see, you might be thinking that while simplicity is a good thing, in some things like jewelry for instance, we like to have complexity. We like to see intricate details. But when you look at these ornaments or embellishments, again, most of them can be broken down into simple geometric forms and shapes. I love celtic crosses, and this is a beautiful example, again, of something that looks quite complex at first, but then again, our mind can very quickly find these simple shapes inside it, so there is a circle. This other detail here can be simplified down to a triangle, or you might be seeing the section of a circle. In these shapes, there is a section there, there is another big circle here, and there's another one here. It is actually made up of four circles, the one in the middle and three larger ones that are not finished. Instead, that they are just turning and joining into each other. But what make these ornaments more interesting is the fact that there is also a sense of depth. When this shape, for instance, goes up here, it goes underneath that smaller circle. But then when it comes back, it's actually on top of it. And the same happens over and over again. So there is this intricate interlocking of these four shapes that we mentioned earlier. Even though it is a simple design made up of four circles, it's presented in a way that makes it feel more complex and intriguing. Another term worth remembering when we talk about simplicity is Hicks Law, which says that the more options you present to your user or viewer, the longer it will take for them to make a decision. Now this law is very important in web design and UX design, where we can proudly say that we came a long way from having websites that were just really cluttered with lots of unnecessary information, to sites that are much neater, cleaner, and more organized. So these two examples were the same site, good, that is original website and the current, much more simplified version of it. And not only the site got simpler, but even the logo, so you might remember this strange cartoon looking logo which was original and it definitely stood out from the rest. But now if you look at their logo, it is much more simpler and cleaner. I'm not saying that it is necessarily better, but in general, the site itself feels much more welcoming and more professional. And that's one very common way that you would hear people refer to things that look simple, that they look professional. And remember that is because creating simple designs usually takes the most experience. Because you need to be able to select the most important components. And also have a very good sense of how big they should be, what colors they should use, and where they should be positioned. As a designer, most of the time, you would have a lot of information that you need to compress into your work. And it is down to you to create order and simplicity by organizing things and keeping everything clear for your users or viewers. 11. Less is definitely more: There's a reason why famous international brands like Apple, Nike, and Target has very simple logos. Even though they didn't start out this simple, they ended up being in this purest form that we can still recognize them. But if you think about it, if we were to remove any more details from them, it would be impossible to connect them to the brand. So even if I were to remove this little shape here, which stands for the leaf of the apple, it would look strange and you might not recognize it straight away. If I were to cut off this bit of the night logo, or maybe the end of it again, it would look strange and you might not immediately recognize it. Or if I were to remove the smaller circle from the Target logo, it would end up being just a regular circle. So again, you wouldn't be able to recognize it. Here's another famous logo that started off being much more complex, and as the brand developed, the logo ended up becoming more and more simplified while preserving its original aesthetics. It is a common practice nowadays that even elements within a logo could be used separately, and if you can still recognize it connected to the brand, that means that your logo is really iconic. A great example is the D from the Walt Disney logo, or the Red Star from the Heineken logo. And similarly to logos, when it comes to icons, it's also extremely important to keep things simple. And even when you would think that icons are already very simple or simplified, they can still be made simpler. So this is a perfect example of that, how all the Google logos were redesigned and made simpler. So from these that we can see here on the top, we ended up seeing these ones which are the current icons for the various Google services. If you look at these icons closely, you can see that besides the designers taking of these small gradients and shadows from the original icons that we can see almost all of them. In the new version, everything is made up of the most simple geometric shapes, rectangles and triangles with rounded corners. So even when it comes to a more complex icon like a camera, they managed to simplify it down to using just a square and a triangle here on the right. One thing that can help you to achieve simplicity usually is consistency. And that's something that we can also see here. In the original design, all of the icons had some kind of indication of depth, but they were not really similar to each other. While the mail icon only had a subtle hint of depth by having this shadow here. So that folded detail feels like it's a little bit higher up than the rest of the icon. The calendar icon, for instance, has a lot more depth and movement in it compared to this. Again, the Google Docs icon, again, compared to the calendar, feels much more flat in terms of shapes being used. Again, we have quite a lot of variety here from circles to triangles to rectangles, so adding more consistency in terms of the shapes used and also how much depth is used in these icons made them more simpler and also more connected or coherent. When designing business cards, it's also a great exercise to try to make them as simple as possible. And I love how creative this card is, where instead of having all the information displayed, there is a single line of information. And these captions helping us to see what are the actual relevant information is for the website, Instagram, e mail, and so on and so forth. Instead of writing, for instance the Singing Bear Shop three times, it was only necessary to write it down once. I love this minimalist illustration as well, and I feel like even without it, seeing tennis here at the bottom, most of us would be able to tell that this is about tennis. Or we can see a tennis court. And if you think about it, it is achieved by only using a couple of simple shapes. So we have the ball, a circle, we have its shadow and ellipse, and then we have these two white lines, one going diagonally this way and the other one going up that way. And of course, we have two different colors used here representing the actual pitch and the area around it. So again, I don't think you can remove any more detail without making it impossible to recognize what we are seeing. Finally, just two examples from a company that is famous for their application of simplicity in the work Apple. Here we can see the Apple card, for instance, which once again has really only the most necessary information on it and nothing else. Even this banner that is promoting this card cannot be simpler than this having the name and the icon of the product here on the top. Then the Description and then the call to Action Options below it. The card is displayed in a pure white backdrop, and only a subtle shadow is indicating depth, which makes it more inviting and tangible. And lastly, take a look at these three posters here on the top. Again, these represent fairly complex stories. We have the two movies, Truman Show and Interstellar, and the well known fairy tale, The Little Red Writing Code on the right. And even though the stories have much more complexity to them, these simplified minimalist designs can still emphasize the most important information about them. All of these designs use a lot of negative space, which really makes the important details highlighted or stand out, like the camera, the spaceship, and the wall. Remember, less is more. Always try to simplify your work as much as you can until there are no unnecessary details left. 12. Symmetry: We already established that one of the best ways of achieving balance in your compositions is by relying on symmetry. But there's actually many different types of symmetry that you can use in your designs. And you can even combine multiple symmetries in one single composition. In this video, we will analyze a couple of very creative examples of all of these different types of symmetries. We will also see how asymmetry can add visual interest to your compositions. And we will even spend some time looking at how symmetry is used in logo design. First of all, why is symmetry universally appealing to everyone in the world? The main reason for that is because it appears very commonly in nature, the human body itself and the face is almost perfectly symmetrical. Even though there are minor differences between the two sides, all of the components of the body are in symmetry. So even if we look at the face, we have things that are centered, like the nose and the lips. While the eyes and ears that are not centered are exactly the same distance from the center line on both sides. The same goes for the limbs as well, like two hands with five fingers on each side. This particular symmetry we call reflectional symmetry, or bilateral symmetry, that achieves the balance and symmetry by mirroring details. Coming back to the hands example, you can see it, that's a perfect mirrored image, the thumbs meeting in the middle and all the other digits reflected to the sides. And you would see the same reflectional symmetry in almost all living organisms, including animals and plants. Just think of trees, that's probably the easiest one to imagine. Both the roots and also the branches aim to achieve symmetry. However, depending on the circumstances and conditions, like strong wind, always coming from the same side, can make a tree asymmetrical. Which doesn't mean that it won't be aesthetically pleasing anymore. On the contrary, it can become more interesting and unique. Now, it is important that reflectional symmetry in design can be applied not only between the left and right sides of your composition, but also between the top and bottom. And even it can be used in a diagonal format. If you place your center of symmetry on a diagonal line, then you can have the reflected or mirrored details in the opposing two corners. Like in this case, the designer of this poster shepherd fairy uses multiple symmetries within the same composition. We clearly have that reflectional symmetry for the face and this image in the middle. We also have radial symmetry for the elements around this circle here. But the typography suggests multiple symmetry lines, so we can place one here in the middle. And we can see this shape here on the top feeling symmetrical, even though the actual characters are not perfectly balanced. But we can also place another symmetry line here, because once again, we have same amount of text at the bottom and on the top. But in terms of the colors used on the text, we can also use a center of symmetry here, diagonally, because as you can see, we have white used in the opposite corners and also black used in opposing corners. Just like with every other tool and method in graphic design, when you are applying symmetry in your compositions, It can be more interesting once you start combining different types of symmetries or even combining symmetry with asymmetry. And notice how the face is not perfectly symmetrical. Like this line here is not repeated on the left side. Also, the lips are not perfectly symmetrical. Even details on the hair are not symmetrical, while the flowers in the hair are actually using perfect symmetry. Those subtle details that introduces asymmetry on the face helps to make it feel more natural because as we discussed, faces in particular are not perfectly symmetrical. And if they are made to look like that, then they will feel strange and awkward. But in terms of composition, what's great is that we have these asymmetrical and symmetrical details close to each other. And just like yin and yang that we mentioned when we were talking about balance, these two opposing things actually work really well together and they complement each other. And you can find lots of other examples on this board, like this poster for the movie Rogue One, where generally everything is symmetrical apart from one small detail. In this case, that is the main character looking towards the left instead of facing us. But also the title and the text plays an aligned to the right. And see even subtle things like this person looking towards the left can balance out the fact that we have the text place here on the right. And the reason for that is, again, implied space or implied details. So even though we are not actually seeing what she is looking at, we imagine that there must be something here on the left side. And even though it is out of frame, it still helps to balance out the details here on the right. If you rely on perfect symmetry in a composition, it might feel a bit too static and boring. And that is why, once again, even with the Titanic poster, although the bottom part of the poster is very symmetrical, the faces here on the top are not in symmetry. We have Kate Winslet looking towards the right and Leonardo Dicaprio is looking downwards. Even on this book cover, which feels like us, is perfect symmetry. If you pay close attention to some details, especially around this area here, you will notice that actually there are some imperfections to achieve reflection or symmetry. You don't always have to use the exact same thing on both sides. You can also just rely on similar objects. And this poster shows this extremely well. Where we have two completely different objects aligned to each other, forming a perfect circle, but still being divided in their center line, which is the center of symmetry. Of course, Wes Anderson, the famous movie director, also loves to use symmetry in his work. So you will find many scenes in all of his movies where you can easily place a center of symmetry in the middle. Besides establishing balance like this, he also likes to use the rule of Odds, where you have the subject in the middle accompanied or framed by two other subjects on the sides. 13. Special types of symmetry: There is also an interesting term called translational symmetry. Which means that instead of just having a mirrored version of the same detail, you would have multiple copies of the same object repeated across a location in space, essentially forming a pattern relying on repetition and rhythm. But for instance, this poster uses both reflectional symmetry, so we could place the symmetry line here in the middle. But it also uses translational symmetry, repeating the same details on a horizontal trajectory. There is also another special form of variation of reflectional symmetry, which we call glide reflectional symmetry, where the mirrored details are not perfectly aligned to each other. Instead, they are slightly shifted from one another. In this case, the glide reflectional symmetry is used on the hands. Even though they are symmetrical, they are not aligned to each other in any way. This particular composition also combines depth and rhythm really well. We can see that that curvy yellow line is interlocking with the hands. Sometimes it's behind the hand, sometimes it comes in front of it. And the rhythm is created by having this overlapping effect, Alternating once it is behind, next time it is in front, then again it is behind, then it is in front, and once again at the end it is behind. And the same thing happens here on the top as well. Another very common and effective form of symmetry is called radial, or rotational symmetry, where most objects and design elements are rotated around a specific centerpoint. And we can spot these center points very quickly and easily. There's one here, another one right here, another one here, again one here in the middle, this one, then another one here on the top, and so on and so forth. It's important that the center point doesn't have to be in the physical or visual center. As I mentioned already in another video, like in this case, we can have the center point placed here, all the way on the left edge of the frame. Even if it's in the center line of the composition, it can be placed further down, not in the exact center, vertically. Just like with the other forms of symmetry. You don't have to use radiosymmetry in a perfect way, although in some cases, like with this pattern, it is used in a way that all the elements are perfectly repeated and around the center of symmetry. But you can see great examples like this poster, where clearly the details are not identical. Even though the radiosymmetry is not perfect, we still feel that everything is very nicely balanced in this composition. When radio symmetry is combined with perspective, where we have the strong lines, again, directing our attention to the center of the composition, the effect of pulling your viewer into your design can be further emphasized. I also love in this particular poster, how the colors are used to connect the two focal points and establish unity and harmony. And you might be wondering if symmetrical designs are pleasing for us. Why would we ever want to use asymmetry in a composition? The best answer to that is that it can introduce drama and intensity, or tension. If that goes well with the main message or theme of your design, then it will be more effective to use asymmetry than symmetry. A great example of this is the fall in Love poster. We all know that when we are in love, we don't think straight and things can get a little bit chaotic. So the use of asymmetry for this topic works really well, just like this poster for the movie Joker, where the main character is in this asymmetrical position, emphasizing how unstable he gets by the end of the movie without spoiling anything for you in case you haven't seen the movie yet. And the same asymmetrical composition works very well also for this Pixar movie up, where it is emphasizing this precarious situation of a house floating in the sky attached to balloons. It is hard to think of anything more out of balance than this. And that is why a perfectly symmetrical composition, where we would have the title here in the middle and the balloon also set in the middle, wouldn't have worked as successfully. And last but not least, if you look at logo designs, you will also see symmetry used very often, helping to achieve and emphasize balance, stability, strength, power, or whatever best applies to a specific brand. And remember what I said about avoiding perfect symmetry in certain cases. That's exactly what you will see in the Starbucks logo where once again, the face has some differences between the left and right side, because it would feel slightly strange to have it perfectly symmetrical. And even the Google logo is not using a perfect circle, so you can see that difference there on the right side. These subtle imperfections in symmetry or a shape can always make things slightly more intriguing. 14. Past Experience: Past experience, also referred to as isomorphism, is probably the most subjective one out of all the guest style principles. It purely relies on the knowledge and interest of an individual. And it usually works well when you're displaying something iconic or famous, like the portray of Bengog, the french fries from Mcdonald's, or the traffic light, which is the same all around the world. Similarly to the other principles, past experience is also a tool with which you can make your viewers work a little bit harder to understand what they are looking at. Again, it's like a little challenge that you set for them. Like in case of the jazz poster here, instead of showing an instrument, we are just seeing a couple of socks drying on a radiator. But because of the way they are arranged and mainly because of the spaces between them, and of course also the fact that they are all black on a white radiator helps us to associate. Reminds us of the keyboard of a piano. Here is another brilliant poster where the gravestones are used to represent death. And even though it is a Christian custom and symbol, it still would be recognized around the world, even in non Christian countries. And seeing these perfect rows of crosses all around makes us immediately look at the empty space here, which is of course, the focal point of the whole composition, saying that is the non smoking area. This text, by the way, is also utilizing the rule of third placement. And also it is on the visual center line, which is always just slightly higher than the physical center line when you divide an image to a top and bottom half. We are discussing these rules in a lot more detail when we get to the composition topic. I also love the simplicity of this poster about breast cancer, which shows just enough detail of these two letters for us to recognize it. But by having them concealed by the hand, we can actually read this also as Beat cancer. Now you might be wondering, what does this design have to do with past experience? And if you think about it, breast cancer is one of the most commonly discussed topics. And there's a lot of campaigns to raise awareness because it is something that really can be avoided if people are doing regular self examination. So the fact that we hear about breast cancer often helps us to read this, even when those two letters are almost completely hidden away. I love these two layout examples as well. Again, referring to fast food or in particular Mcdonald's, where the actual body copy and typography is used as an integral part of the illustrations. On the text, we see the text used to form a burger, the soda can, and also the catch up. While here on the right, it is used as the individual pieces of the fries, simply just by applying a different color to the body copy. So remember that you can create very clever designs by relying on the past experience of your viewers. But you have to be careful to use items or objects that are widely known or understood, even when they are simplified obscured or even just simply referred to. 15. Similarity: Similarity is another guest style principle, which means that we instinctively connect objects or elements with similar attributes and consider them as part of the same group. This principle can be applied to anything, but it works really well on websites where you have lots of different products that maybe you want your users to compare to each other. And once again, Apple does a brilliant job at doing that. Again, keeping things as simple as possible and making sure that you can see not only the similarities, but also spot the differences easily between the products. So between these three Macbook models, the main difference, of course, is the size. And by having them placed perfectly next to each other, we can very quickly see the differences in the screen sizes. But we can also spot subtle differences like the bevels being larger here, the notch for the webcam, more noticeable on these two models. And also the base of the Macbook. Slightly different on the larger models compared to the smallest one. So this page, for instance, wouldn't work as well if we were to align these Macbooks on their vertical center point. That would mean that the bottom point of each of them would be slightly shifted and it would be much harder to see the differences in the screen sizes. Similarity can be achieved with a lot of different things. For instance, in this poster, we just had to keep the text using the same typeface and the same color. And even though the letters are completely scattered throughout the poster and even stretch and re size in all kinds of various ways, we can still connect them and read these texts fairly quickly and easily. You have to be careful again how you use similarity. If you make things too obviously similar, it might be a little bit too boring and static. While if you introduce a bit of variety or differences while still making sure that people can connect those details to each other, You can achieve a design that is more dynamic and engaging. There's another term worth remembering when talking about similarity. It's called invariance, which means that we recognize similar or familiar shapes in spite of variance in their color, size, and even rotation. This poster proves this really well. That even though we are seeing planes stacked on top of each other, we can also very quickly spot Christmas tree here, thanks to those little glowing lights at the end of each of the wings. Just like with all the other guest style principles, breaking similarity can also be a good way of drawing attention to a certain detail. And usually this is what we call an anomaly at this similar element, or an element that stands out from the rest of the environment. So it is a great way to create a focal point like this one with the red arrow pointing the opposite direction. Invariance is an important skill that almost everyone has, and you as a graphic designer can rely on it to make sure that people will recognize objects or characters, even when they are really simplified into a minimalistic version, like what we can see here with these icons. You only need to draw a few lines in the right order and right proportions to be able to create something like a cat, a poodle, or a flower, a paintbrush, or even a pineapple. Similarly to how caricature artist has to spot and exaggerate the standout and unique features of people to create convincing and fun illustrations of them. You as a graphic designer or illustrator must also learn to recognize those most important details that can still help people to recognize what you're displaying. Sometimes this might be hard to achieve, especially when you have a lot of information that you have to compress into your composition. Like take this example of the map of the Los Angeles Zoo. Besides all the illustrations of the animals, there's also a lot of important signs here, including the refreshment areas and also botanical highlights. But similarity, again, helps to connect these to each other because all the refreshment areas are indicated with red squares and all the botanical highlights with green leaves. It is very quick and easy for us to spot them within the map, even though it has a lot of additional details and information. Normally, you would want your designs to stand out and grab the attention of your viewers. However, sometimes it can be more effective or easier for your users if you rely on well known templates or layouts, which is definitely the case when it comes to creating accounts and signing into different services. So by now, almost everywhere you would find different ways of signing in, whether it is using social media or some other accounts like Google or Apple. Besides manually typing in your email and password, and almost all the time, you would have to remember me and forgot your passwords placed here on the bottom left and the actual sign in button on the bottom right. So here you can see the login options for three completely different sites. And you can see the similarity both in the placement of the options, the sizing of them, and even the alignment. Similarity can be used on a micro level, meaning within your design, but can also be used on a macro level, meaning that you're creating something similar to other designs that people are accustomed to using. Even when it comes to the logos of famous fashion brands, there is a reason why some of them look so similar to each other. Most likely because they are competing with each other and also trying to achieve the same kind of aesthetics. Usually you would want text in your logo to be very clear and legible. And if you told your client that you are planning to cover up 50% of the type in their logo, they would probably think that you are crazy. But that's exactly what happened with the IBM logo. And even though we have these empty wide gaps within the text, we can still easily read it thanks to the other guestyle principle we already talked about, which is closure. But also the fact all of these lines that we can still see are similar to each other, not only in their color but also in their thickness. And even those gaps or spaces that were added are exactly the same size, so there's even a rhythm and repetition within this pattern of lines. The more we talk about guest style principles, and the more you understand about them, the more you will see them connected in each design. So a successful design almost never relies on a single principle. It would combine many of them and make them work together to create something unique and engaging. 16. Uniform Connectedness: Uniform connectedness is another guest start principle that can help you to pair objects to each other. But here, instead of relying similarity in visual appearance, you use lines, arrows, or other shapes to connect certain elements to each other. These connecting devices can help viewers to connect information to certain details within a composition, even when it's quite complex and even when the two connected details are placed far from each other. Flow charts, for instance, wouldn't work without the use of uniform connectedness. And the same applies to infographics here. For instance, besides the line that shows the timeline for the history of communication, there are also these smaller arrows to connect the relevant information to each of the dots on the timeline. Connecting lines don't always have to point at specific details and highlight important features within a photo or illustration. They can also be just used to group information. Like in the case of this poster where after describing something, this line helps us to go back to the pair. And then another line leads us to the next information. These lines serve as visual pathways within the design. And the same applies to this billboard design, where a simple message, a single sentence is broken up into four different parts connected by dots and lines, highlighting how important it is to get a guide in order to skip the cues, but still be able to see all the important landmarks. This layout uses a similar composition where again, we have the title broken up into three separate words completely scattered around on this spread. And the simplified and curvy lines of the statoscope is the only thing that connects them to each other and helps the reader to be able to read this title. I also love in this particular example that the device that used for creating this connectedness is also intertwining with the typography. So we can see a very subtle use of depth. The V, for instance, slightly hiding behind that black line here, while the E is already in front of it. Again, the going behind the black line, while the U is in front of it. And there is even consistency in how all the three words are slightly cropped. So we have half of the T missing here, half of the H missing on the right, and also half of the missing here. So in this case, besides uniform connectedness, there is also similarity used to make sure that we can pair these three words to each other. They share the same type phase, but they also have the subtle depth or intertwining effect with the illustration. And they are also all slightly cropped at their ends. Once again, uniform connectedness wouldn't work as well as when it is combined with the other guestyle principles that we already covered. 17. Common Regions: Common region is another fairly obvious guest out principle which states that elements are perceived as part of the same group if they are placed in the same closed region. Your task as a designer is to be able to create these regions in creative ways, whether by using frames, different background colors for each section, or just simple lines for division. On this board, you can see a couple of traditional examples, but also some unique and creative ones. So for instance, here is a layout where we have these lines dividing the different stories. And besides those thin division lines, what also helps viewers to recognize where each of the stories start are the entry points indicated here with these numbers, which thanks to their similarity, will immediately lead the viewer from one point to the next. You don't always have to use devices like lines or frames to create these common regions. Sometimes it is simply just enough to use some wide space or gaps. Like here with this page from a guidebook, we don't need to see individual division lines between each of these components because of the gap between the images and the text already groups them together to each other and makes it easy to recognize those common regions. And the only time a line is used is when it is important to make sure that we can separate the food and drink category from the rest. And category, like always less is more. And a single use of a line is much more effective than creating a mesh or grid that would be completely unnecessary in this layout, even though we have a couple of division lines between the columns. The main tool that is used to create these common regions are the different background colors. And again, the reason why this design feels elegant and effortless is because instead of introducing strong edges between these two regions, or decorative patterns like wavy lines or zigzags or maybe even an angle on this division line, it already works beautifully the way it is when it comes to user interface design. It is also important to be able to create these common regions, to group all the important functions or features together. But again, it's important that the devices or details that you used to create these regions should always be secondary and really faint in the background, making sure that they are not overpowering the actual features that need to stand out. You can see here, for instance, how subtle these division lines are. They are not only thin, but they are very faint, almost the same color as the surrounding background color. The central area here is also just a tiny bit darker than the other regions around it. It would feel too overpowering if we introduced a stronger background color. For instance, using the color from the logo here on this background, you can imagine would be way too intense and it would create too much contrast from the rest of the composition. Stronger contrasts on background details are used only on smaller and more important elements like these. And last but not least, like I mentioned, you can be very creative in the way that you create common regions. Like with this example from Apple, the Macbooks themselves are the devices that are used to separate the regions. So the information here on the left side and on the right side are clearly not connected to each other, but connected to those devices next to them. And of course, it also helps that they have different alignment. While this text here is aligned to the left, the other one is aligned to the right. And even simple things like the alignment of text can help to really connect to the right detail within a composition. Alignment, of course, is another big topic that we will be covering in much more detail once we start talking about space. 18. Proximity: Proximity is another guest start principle that states that we perceive objects that are closer to each other to be more related than elements or objects that are further apart. This is similar to common regions, but here instead of actually using devices like frames or lines, you just simply group things together by simply placing them close to each other. This is a very important principle that you have to apply in both print and web design in order to create hierarchy and guide your viewers through your design in the intended order. Even though it, again, sounds like a quite obvious thing to do, it is actually a big topic and there's a lot more to it. And I believe it makes more sense to talk about it in context of space and how we use space in our designs, which is another big topic in this course. So if you wish to learn about this guest style principle right now, feel free to jump ahead to the chapter called space. And once you're done, you can come back and continue with the rest of this chapter. Proximity is another guest start principle that states that we perceive objects that are closer to each other to be more related than elements or objects that are further apart. So this is similar to common regions, but here instead of actually using devices like frames or lines, you just simply group things together by simply placing them close to each other. This is a very important principle that you have to apply in both print and web design in order to create hierarchy and guide your viewers through your design in the intended order. And even though it, again, sounds like a quite obvious thing to do, it is actually a big topic and there's a lot more to it. And I believe it makes more sense to talk about it in context of space and how we use space in our designs, which is another big topic in this graphic design theory series. So if you're interested to learn more about it, make sure to check that one out. Similarly to the other guest style principles that we covered in this course, I am going into great detail analyzing all the examples that you can see on this board, but you will also hear me refer to it in some of the upcoming videos. And of course, you will be able to access this board to have a good look at these examples in your own time. 19. Conclusion: Congratulations on completing this course of the graphic design theory series. I hope you found it useful and inspiring. Don't forget to go through the glossary of terms, PDF, review everything we covered, and if you feel ready, take the quiz to test your knowledge. Come back any time to the references on the Miller Not Boards we use in this course to help you remember the things we talked about or to find inspiration for your next design project. Please let us know if you felt there was anything missing from this course or if you have any suggestions on how we can improve it. E mail us at Info at Sm Designer.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We really appreciate your input and help. Now it's time for you to pick your next topic and dive into another graphic design theory course. Remember, there is no right or wrong order to complete this series. All the rules we cover are equally important and everything is related. But what is most important is getting a good understanding of these rules and applying them in your projects. I'm sure you will use what you've learned to create something amazing, and I cannot wait to see it.