Introduction to Design

1. Chapter 0 - Introduction: Hello everyone, Welcome to level-0, Introduction to Design. We're really excited to have you here. Yeah, I'm Janice and I'll be one of your design instructor teaching you all the theories in design. And I'm Leah, I'm your other design instructor. I'll be teaching you how to take the design theories and fundamentals that you learn and apply it in practice. So some of the topics that we'll be covering in this course includes the fundamentals in design, the principles to apply the foundations. And lastly, putting it altogether, we have a lot of really fun and exciting content for you to learn in this course. See you all in the next chapters. Before we get into the topics of design, let us understand what design is and why we should care about it. Design can be found all around us and comes in many forms. From phone apps to electric cars, printed posters to digital billboards. The effects of design can be found everywhere. When we talk about design, the image that often comes to mind is one that is focused largely on looks, but it's more than just that. We often see the visual output whenever the input and what happens in-between. To put it simply, design creates value through an ongoing process of identifying the problems and refining the solutions to them. Most things we use in life are designed with intent. Like the chair you may be sitting on. The designer has carefully considered how and who may be using them when designing. Notice how the chair changes depending on the room it is being used in. However, don't be scared right off the bat. You don't have to be an amazing artist or need to know how to draw it to be a designer. But you do need to be curious and ask questions to solve the right problems. Stay tuned for more. 2. Chapter 1 - Typography: So whenever we think about design, we typically think about lingo shapes and adding color to make something pretty. But it actually starts off with something more simple than that. And that is letters. For this lesson, we're going to kick off with understanding what letters are, how to look at them, and how to use them properly. When we download a new font, there's typically a bunch of files inside a package. Why are they so many files? Let's take a look at why and what all those files mean. Before installing a file, we would typically Google and browse for something nice to use. But the thing is when we say we want to install a file, we're actually referring to a typeface. The problem here is that the two terms are now used interchangeably. So what is the difference between them? When we download the package, a bunch of those files have specific sizes and weights of the typefaces. And so we use bonds when referring to each of those biles, but they all belong to the same typeface family. For example, Times New Roman is a typeface, but at 12 Times New Roman regular is a font and a 10-point Times New Roman bolt is another font. Why we have these two differentiation is that in the olden days, when printing letters was still a manual process, we had to individually look for the letter blocks with a very particular size, weight, and style to get the job done. Hopefully this clears off some confusion and moving forward, we will be referring to anything that has to do with texts as type or typeface. With that in mind, let's dive deeper into how texts can be effective in design. So whenever we learn a new language, we usually don't think about the history behind them. So let's rewind back in time and see how letters got developed to the way that we use it today. Before getting to the letter points we see today, letters used to be simply cave paintings in the form of pictograms that dates back to 20 thousand BC. As the need to convey complex ideas grew, the drives became symbols to represent stuff like sounds, objects and ideas. And then the Greeks started to abstract the pictures even more. And the Romans then made refinements to what we know as the alphabet today. Moving into the Middle Ages, around the fifth and late 15th century, there was a strong focus and handwritten manuscripts which inspired some of the highly decorative typefaces we use today. Did you know that at the time when printers were non-existent, scribes were actually hired to replicate books by writing letter, by letter at a time. That would take around at least two weeks to complete a book. Thankfully, to speed up the process, the letter press machine was invented. Although the Chinese had invented at first, letterpress technology could not easily scale up to the massive 50 thousand characters in the Chinese language. However, you'll head as Gutenberg got credited for it because it was easier to deploy this technology in a 26 character Latin based language. Gutenberg development in the 15th century became life-changing to Western culture because all that was needed was to create a bunch of letters, damps, arrange them, get them inked, and then the content gets so-called print it. It was also around this time when the term font and typeface was created so that people can find the correct stamps been back. The stamps were also stored at both a top and bottom Door configuration. That's how the uppercase and lowercase terms came about. As we move into the modern era, we then develop smaller and more portable machines like the typewriter and soon after the computers and keyboards we use today. Looking back at the first existence of written communication to the way we use letters. Now, we can see that the development was highly influenced by technological advances and changes in culture. That was just a brief history on time. If you want to learn more, check out the internet. Just like how we have terms to describe different parts of an animal. We have terms to describe letters as well. Let's find out what some of them are so we know what to look for when choosing a typeface. Letters are built using strokes. The curved ones are called a bowl and to hold everything up, we have a stem. As we learned in the history lessons. Letters are derived from the drawings of humans. That's why stroke names are named after the body parts like i, yr, arm, shoulder, leg, and spine. Sometimes we may find letters with some decorative elements called the Sarah and the ends of the letter without a Sarah is called a terminal. All the letters then sit on an invisible line called the baseline, so that there is a strong anchor point to place them. The height of a letter is maxed out at the cap height, and all letters are measured using the x-height because the letter X has a very clear cut off at the top and bottom. We can now use these terms to describe different styles of letters. Imagine that we have to design a new website for a company. Let's walk through the process of choosing typefaces for this project. First things first, we will need to understand what our company offers and the personality of our company. Let's say we're a company that sells handcrafted modern furniture. You may already have a few images come up in your mind, and some of those may be elegance, bespoke, and simplicity. With that in mind, one option is to use a sans serif typeface for our website. The reason is that they usually convey a more modern approach. Typically with body texts, we will use the regular weight, but sometimes we can use italics as a way to add emphasis. We can then pair that a website with a serif typeface because they are sometimes harder to render well digitally, we can use them on larger texts like titles and headers. Serif typefaces often have handwritten qualities with their high contrast in thin and thick strokes. Using them can help us communicate the hand-crafted aspect of our brand. Since thereof, typefaces often appear to be thinner on screen, we can also use a bold way to make the headlines easier to scan. After that, we can choose to create a logo type using a decorative typeface. This kind of typeface is generally made as a one-off because they are specially crafted and can create quite dramatic results to stand out from the crowd. Then to inform people that we're launching our company, we may use a scripted typeface. Having this typeface used as an invitation or banner at the top of the website. It makes it feel more personal as if it was handwritten for a special event. All you need is to identify the mood that you want to convey and go from there. Now that we have selected the typeface for our website, the next step is to put them together. This is bad. We need to make the text readable and legible, otherwise, no one would want to buy our furniture. We do that by creating a good visual hierarchy so that people know what to look at first. One of the ways to achieve hierarchy is to use a different way to create emphasis. For example, a boulder title. However, it is important to not fake your bolts by outlining the original typeface with a black stroke and especially don't outline texts with a color stroke. Something we'll definitely look suspicious. Instead, look for a typeface that has a black way to give you something thicker. Here are few examples. We have light condensed and extended versions as well, so we don't need to squish or squash type. We can also pair typefaces. In our project, we will use a Sarah for the headlines and says era for the paragraphs. The other two ways to prototype is to either have all of them from the same family are combined to Sarah's together or two sensors together. Anymore than that is a big no-no, as it creates confusion for the reader. Since we have some titles and paragraphs, we can play with size by making the title is larger and the paragraph smaller. Other ways to achieve hierarchy is a gift spacing between the headlines and the paragraphs or adjust its position by indenting them. We can also change the orientation of the title to bring focus to the paragraphs instead of the titles. But don't try to vertically align each letter. It will just turn out looking really awkward. So rotate the entire baseline instead. Alternatively, we can call attention to the text by changing its color or shades of value to give it contrast. So those will be read first. Looking at the titles and paragraphs. There are other texts treatments to pay attention to. For example, if we set the titles to all caps, they are perceived as a bunch of rectangular blocks and are much harder to read. Instead, by mixing the cases, give more shapes to the words and they become much easier to scan. For sentences and paragraphs. Try not to have long line lengths as your eyes will need to travel back and forth a lot. Generally, they are kept anywhere from 45 to 80 characters to be read at Comfort. Another type hygiene is to not stack two of the same word on top of each other in a paragraph. In situations like this, we can reword the content or make adjustments to the type to prevent the awkwardness. Some final notes. Keep the wreck relatively vertical and don't single out words or short sentences at the end or beginning of a paragraph. Working with type can be challenging, but these guidelines can help us stay on track. So try them out. In your next projects. We've only scratched the surface of typography from is history, two terminologies and use cases. Go out and explore how type is used around us. 3. Chapter 2 Elements of Design: Great designs don't happen by magic. Designers need to carefully consider how to arrange type and the visual elements of line, shape, space, color, and texture. In this chapter, we're going to look through how each of these elements can have an impact on design. While we wait for the plaintiff takeoff, we may grab the magazine in the front pouch to look for any in-flight entertainment available. But how are magazines designed to help us find what we want? One way is to use lines. So let's start with that. As we turn the pages in the magazine, we will notice that there are a lot of actual lines used to decorate the page. But there are also a lot of abstracted lines, like the lines of texts and leading lines found in images. Actual lines can be used to anchor important content to be read first, like titles or paragraphs we see in the magazine. Both actual and abstracted lines can provide an illusion of direction and rhythm. They inform us where to start reading and how fast our eyes move across the page to the next items. Depending on the style of the lines use, they can convey certain moods, such that sharp angles can look aggressive and dangerous while flowing lines feel friendlier and inviting. Likewise, thin strokes are seen as more delicate than thick strokes. They also come in a dash, dotted, or textured format. Since lines have a lot of characteristics that can be used as decoration or help us navigate a page. So use them with caution to prevent any visual disorientation. We saw how lines can enhance and inform us how to read a magazine. So let's take the time now to look at how shapes can give similar effects. On the pages, we would often find the three geometric shapes of triangle, rectangle, and circle. And each one of these serves a purpose. Rectangles are typically used to frame images, while triangles can provide a sense of movement, and circles are used to create contrast between the shapes with hard edges so that it is more pleasing to the eyes. Sometimes we will see basic shapes that have been modified to make the page look more dynamic. For instance, a designer may round the corners to make a page more welcoming, skew them to give a sense of speed or completely rotate them to alter its original shape. There are also times where organic shapes are used on a page. We will definitely see them in the images. But organic shapes can be graphical elements that make the page look more fluid with this irregular forms. Shapes can take on many different forms in 2D and 3D. So try them out to express different emotions in design. As we keep turning the page on the magazine, we tend to focus on the graphic elements instead of the whitespace around the page. Let's find out why is that and how space can play a role in design. The reason why we are drawn to the texts and graphical items is because they create an area of interests through positive space, while the white background resides as negative space. Were more space is given to one object over the rest, we would gravitate towards that single object because it has a heavier weight and it doesn't compete with the rest of the items. If we were to evenly distribute the space, the page can look more orderly. On the other hand, by scattering the content, we can create a sense of chaos or playfulness. If no spaces Given, we often find the content feels a little cramp and can be difficult to read. We can also achieve three-dimensional space by stacking content on top of each other, like adding shapes and text on top of a background image. Space plays an important role in allowing our eyes to breed. So there's really no need to try to jam everything on a single page. As we continue on the next few pages have photos and illustrations emphasizing on materials. Let's see how textures can affect our designs. First, we can discern textures in a printed magazine because of the identity and spatial orientation that they give off. We know that grass is grass because of the lines and shapes it creates. We can also feel textures in a photo from tactile qualities like hard and soft, rough and smooth, glossy and Matt, and many more. Through the photo, we can see a lot of actual qualities of texture, like the soft sand on a beach. But the same image in illustration form will give us imply qualities of how we perceive the texture. When properly use, textures are not only visually appealing, but can add depth to our designs. The last visual element you see while browsing through a magazine is the use of color. We will go into detail in a separate lesson, but here are some things that color can do. Colors used in a travel magazine makes us want to go to those destinations. They can also be added to graphical elements like shapes and texts to give attention to specific areas of content. The key is to use them sparingly, because like all things, overusing colors can create visual clutter, making it very difficult to read. We don't always need to add color in our design, and they can either elevate or detract a reader's experience. We'll revisit this in a later lesson. Alrighty, we went through the five elements of design and learn that they can be used both as a guide and decoration. See if you can spot any of these elements in play. The next time you see something that has been designed, such as buildings, packaging, and act. 4. Chapter 3 - Colour: We make color choices every day from picking up the clothes to wear to decorating our house. But have you ever stopped and wonder where colors came from and how they impact us? In this segment, we'll cover the scientific aspects of color, the terminologies, theories in psychology. So we know how to choose and pair them. We don't often give it much thought when choosing a color to apply in our design. But there's actually some science behind to the colors available to us today. Let's find out how colors were discovered and how they are organized. Colors used to exist merely as a theory in the past. It wasn't until the 17th century when Sir Isaac Newton proved that color exists in light. In his experiment, he held up a glass prism at the sunlight and thought that the white light split into a rainbow. In another experiment, he painted the colors he saw on a disk. And when he spun it, he found that all the colors blurred back into what? And that's how we got colors and the famous color wheel. To create the color wheel, there are two ways to mix colors depending on the medium. In the physical world, we use a subtractive color model so that the more colors we add, the darker it gets. However, in the digital world, we use an additive color model. The more colors are light we add, the lighter it gets. We start off with the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, because they are the base colors that cannot be produced by mixing other colors in the physical world. On a digital screen, however, the primary colors are red, green, and blue. After mixing the primary colors, we get secondary colors, which are orange, green, and purple in physical and cyan, magenta, and yellow in digital. Lastly, when we start mixing primary and secondary colors, we get the rest of the colors on the wheel. They say Newton's discovery, we now have the color wheel to make reference to when picking out colors for our needs. And knowing the basics of color, we can then look into the effects they create. Most people would be able to point to a color and identify it. But there are more than seven colors of the rainbow and we need ways to describe them. Why don't we introduce you to some of the terms so you can understand how to explain them. First and foremost, we describe color based on their hue. We might call it color blue, but there are specific cost associated with each blue and they differ based on the medium. This allows us to refer to the exactly when it is used in print or on screen. Once we pick a here we want to use, we can adjust the saturation to make a color look more pale or vivid. Another change we can make to a hue is to modify the light qualities through brightness, value or lightness. Doing so can turn a color black or white. And then if we add more white into the pigment where tinting the color. And when we add more black, we're shading the color. With these in mind. We can now use them to talk about and customized colors. There are a lot of colors to choose from, but how can we use them in a way that is not visually jarring? Let's take a look at how to combine colors to achieve harmony and different moods. Suppose we want to create a website for a skincare product. Before we start picking colors and a palette for our designs, we will want to identify a tone instead of temperature to better convey the brand. If we use warm colors, then it will suggest more energy because they are a lot brighter, while colder colors feel more calm as they are less vivid. Some neutral colors like beige, brown, and gray can be an option as well. If we're not trying to make a statement, since these colors come up as having much less energy. Going back to our website example, we want to use warm colors to give it a more vibrant personality. With the mood define, let's now look at different ways to pair colors. There are six ways to pair colors. Monochromatic, analogous complimentary triad to Chadwick and achromatic. If we want the website to feel peaceful, we can use a monochromatic palette that uses different tints and shades of a single hue. However, it may be hard to work with a single color in the digital medium because we need more colors to communicate various types of interaction. We can do so by leveraging the analogous scheme and use colors that are found next to each other. One caveat is the need to use one of the colors as the dominant and the rest is secondary. To create a more drastic effect, a complimentary color scheme can be used by using colors directly opposite to each other. Doing so catches our attention because of the high contrast and creates a vibrant look. We can definitely add more colors to make a more extensive palate. Such as using the triadic color palette that uses three colors, fat, evenly spaced out on the color wheel. Oftentimes the result can be quite vibrant, so Reserve only one color as the dominant color. Continuing on, we have the Titanic palette, which uses four colors found evenly spaced out on the wheel. Same as before, only have one color as the dominant. To prevent cognitive overload, having too many colors can get distracting. We can make use of neutrals like black, white, and gray with the achromatic palette to tone it down. We can now see that there's a lot more contrast on the website and creates a more neutral effect. There are many qualities to color, and depending on how we apply them, they reflect different emotion. Starting your designs in black and white and slowly building up the palate is the way to go. We typically associate meanings with color. When we come across a color like white, it can mean something positive or negative depending on the culture. That's why choosing the right color is important because they have different connotations. Red is a color that demands attention, usually corresponds to passion, war, and string. In some cultures, it can mean celebration and vitality. Using red and our work can be quite striking. See them often in warning labels and stuff science to prevent us from danger. On the other hand, orange fields crazier, but can still be energetic and vibrant. Many uses color to invoke a sense of adventure and rejuvenation. When applied to a piece, it carries less aggression than red and is a lot more inviting. Yellow is among the brightest colors. That's why many use it to convey happiness and joy. And we often see it's used to symbolize hope and competence. There's a lot of energy and cheer when yellow is used in a design. Maybe that's why we like to eat McDonald's so much to make us happy. When we think of green, we think of things in nature like grass and trees. That's why this color represents life, renewal and grow. We see is used often in recycling or organic products that we eat. It has the additive effects of creating a calming sensation. Blue is another common color, but it is a lot colder. It gives a sense of security and helps promote trust and loyalty. We might find this colored use for banks and insurance companies, and not forgetting the police force that keeps our streets safe. As for purple, it's calm and energetic. At the same time. Historically, it has been used by royalty to convey well and nobility. Sometimes it can be used to represent wisdom as well. This is one of the reasons we can spot the use of purple in premium brands like Cadbury's chocolate. Block can have positive or negative connotations as it conveys both sophistication and sadness. We will see this shag use in formal and prestigious events or at funerals. On the flip side, while it may seem rather straightforward, it conveys purity or innocence. However, in Western culture, we see brides wear white for a festive occasion. But in Chinese culture, white can mean, yet. Whenever white is used, it gives a clean and minimalistic effect. We briefly gone over some of the major colors and the meanings behind them. There are a lot more colors available out there. So do your research and understand how certain colors plays a role in different cultures. Colors can be used to not only enhance our designs, but affects our lives as well. The next time you're out, take a look at how they are used and why certain colors were chosen. 5. Chapter 4 - Principles of Design: In the last few chapters, we looked at the different building blocks and design, such as letters and colors. It is now time to put them together using the principles of design to create cohesive compositions. When first starting out on a design, we don't put things blindly on a Canvas. There are ways to lay out the visual elements so people can look through them easily. Let's start off with understanding how the principle of balance can be useful in design. To better illustrate the effects of the balance principle, it is useful to view elements on a canvas as having some sort of mass and gravity. The larger the item, the heavier it is, and the smaller the item, the lighter it is. With that in mind, it's time to design a poster for a social event. Like any large object exerting a gravity when a large graphical elements gets added to one side of the canvas, you see the visual weight gets shifted to that side. To balance it out, we need to put another large element that has the same amount of weight on the other side. Doing so creates a symmetrical balance. This method generally provides a strong and stable structure to a composition because the visual weight is perceived to be exactly equal on both sides. Another way to create balance is the use of asymmetrical balance, where the weight is not evenly distributed on a page. For example, in our social event poster, we can add more details to the left by having a few smaller elements to balance out the single graphic on the right. The use of asymmetrical balance may sometimes cause it to look less even, but it helps create visual interests by having a variety of elements on the canvas. You'll notice that elements don't exist by themselves inside a defined boundary. They vary in visual weight and exerts themselves differently depending on how they are placed. So we'll need to use balanced to create equilibrium in our compositions. Similar to music, we can create visual rhythm to pace our audience throughout the design elements will now take a look at the different kinds of rhythms we can make. One of the ways to achieve visual rhythm is through the repetition of similar elements spaced equally on a page to give it a consistent look. The most basic kind of rhythm we can use is called regular rhythms. And they are often found in novels and textbooks. When we read through a book, the roles of texts and the space between the rows are similar in size. We know exactly where to start next when finished reading one line of texts. Alternatively, we can use flowing rhythms to give a sense of movement with its free flowing patterns. This style of rhythm is more organic and is found more in nature. We can use this illustrates something like plants and water. Lastly, we can use progressive rhythm to give a more interesting sequence by changing the element a little bit every time it is repeated. For example, gradually shifting and elements size and position will do the trick. We can see this type of pattern on the shelves of snails are computer generated graphics. By controlling how elements are repeated, we can evoke a sense of emotion and motion in design. When we're arranging elements on a page, we also need to consider what items we want our audience to look at. First, one way is to vary the proportions of the elements. Simply put, whatever is largest will catch our attention first, while smaller items tend to be overlooked and receipts into the background. We can see that the mountains are larger than the trees in the photo. So we notice the mountains first because of their size. On certain occasions, smaller items can be put in focus as well. If we intentionally frame our photo to show a castle in it, it can become something of interests, even though it's a lot smaller than the mountains. As a result, changing the scale of an element in relation to others or one of its parts can provide different visual weight and death for audience. Simply adjusting the size of an element can also give good hierarchy to our work. Another method to emphasize content to be looked at first is the use of contrast. Let's find out how this principle can be applied. Contrast is achieved when there's two completely opposite degrees of emphasis in a piece of design. What that means is creating a juxtaposition by having a large difference in shape, color, or size in the same composition. You can also do the same by changing either the position, rotation, or texture. For instance, we can have bright colored elements to stand out from a dark background or a hard edge element amongst soft edge elements. By making elements pop, it creates an interesting relationship between the visual elements that can either push them away from each other, connect them, or compliment them. However, only pick one variable to change else, it will become overwhelming. We've been talking about the need to create focus and emphasis. But without tying the visual elements together, it can be hard to see them as a single piece. Harmony and design requires us to attend to unity. The reason something is aesthetically pleasing has less to do with chance and more to do with the techniques a designer employees to make sure the elements co-exist in a composition. The key is to treat elements similarly. Let's design another poster to see how Unity works. First, we need to establish a color palette that belongs in the same family. For our poster to raise awareness about marine pollution, we'll go ahead and use the blue monochromatic color scheme. Next, when we add graphic elements like shapes of water bottles and fishes, we need to keep the styles almost identical. If we have soft edges, we need to keep all the shapes with rounded corners. The patterns created can then be repeated and similar content types can be aligned and group together. Even within a collection of similar items, we can create visual distinction. For example, by having one with a highlight that is in a different color. If done correctly, we can see all the design elements come together and belonged together. Not only those unity improve the visual coherence of things, but it can also help improve the usability and products. After taking a look at the five principles of design, we can see that there are many ways to arrange elements. They can be combined or used individually. The next time you look at something that has been designed, try to decipher how the elements are laid out and how is it affected. 6. Chapter 5 - Grid Systems: Remember how we use grid paper and mass class to help us draw graphs. We can use grids to lay out design elements to, for this chapter will cover what grids are in ways to use them to structure our layouts. Before we get into the specifics, let's run through some basic history on grid and the importance of place later on InDesign. As we saw in the topography chapter in the good old days, publications were manually printed by having someone hand write letters and draw graphics out. Groups were not necessarily in the past because publications we're seeing more as artwork without the need to distribute books for education. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution in the 20th century when technology advanced far enough for mass production of publications to reach more people. In order to create publications like newspaper on a daily basis, there was a need to come up with rules and structures to easily snap content into slots. Could you imagine the pressure to turn out new content and layout everyday, people will go nuts. With that. Demand. Grids were developed to fulfill designs faster without the need to create new layers each time. As a reusable system, it can provide quick and generic layouts are highly customized one-offs. Grid acts as a guideline to allow us to arrange texts, images, and other graphic elements on a page, saves us time to figure out where to put them. We typically don't see these guidelines as they are removed once a designer completes their designs. But if we analyze a piece of design deep enough, we will see how the elements are aligned with the developments of grids. It became a powerful tool to give structure when designing. Our audience can easily navigate around the content. Now that we know how grids became important is time to get into the details. Like we have human and let her anatomies grids also have them. We'll now go through some of the components that build up a grid. To create a grid for a project, we start with vertical guidelines to set columns for our content. In creating the columns, we will also need to define the spacing between the columns known as gutters. Making changes to this will affect how far the content gets spaced out. Having them too narrow or too spaced out, we'll make things difficult to read. The key is to maintain balanced by spacing things far enough to be easy on the eyes, yet not too much that it breaks the reading continuity. Flow lines can then be used to divide sections into modules so that content can be placed in these boxes. However, content does not need to be confined inside the boxes we created. They can span across multiple columns and modules. Any of the opening areas are called spatial zones. In the example, we can see that if all the content fits inside a rectangle, the layout looks really rigid. By enlarging some of the images, it creates more visual interests. We can also give additional spacing around the content called padding or outside this bounding box called margins. No matter how complex a grid is, they all contain the same cards mentioned. Each part is intended for a specific purpose that can be either combined, are removed from the overall structure to set intriguing layouts. Grids come in many forms. Let's take a look at the different types and how they can be put into practice. Starting with the basics, the single column grid only has one column to help readers focus on the text line by line. We see the use of this type of grid a lot in school. They're often used in text materials like the essays we write and the novelist reread. When a more complex layout is needed, the use of multi column grids gives us more columns to play with. This system helps us break down the content into digestible chunks. They can often be found in magazines and websites. Why do you need to create cohesion between an assortment of content? Grids can also be split into equal boxes, where a modular grid system allows greater flexibility for content to be placed. Readers are encouraged to start reading anywhere in any order they prefer. As commonly seen in textbooks, it is up to the reader to choose between the pictures, body texts, or pole close to read first. If we set the content to start on a full line instead of the top-left corner in a module, it anchors the content on an anchor line, turning it into a baseline grid. This method creates a consistent reading Rhythm among the elements. The grid systems we looked at so far are traditional types that are generally found in print mediums. Let's see how grids are treated onscreen. When designing for digital, we start first with either one of the grid types specified earlier. We then complement that with using fixed multiples when placing elements like icons and drop-downs. For example, an iPhone app may use a single column grid and then leverage Apple's design guideline of a four pixel grid system to build the elements. The smallest element can start at four pixels, and larger elements are multiples of that. Similarly, at Google, they use it a pixel grid system. So an Android app, we will have elements starting at eight pixels. Depending on the device we're designing for, we need to pick the corresponding guidelines so that our design can be scaled according to its device resolutions. Lastly, we can make custom grids as well if the others have too strict of a structure for our liking. Grids don't always have to be rectilinear. They can be diagonal, round, or free-flowing to communicate other ideas through the use of grids. They can also assist in balancing a page if we're struggling. Using an e-commerce example, a two column grid sets asymmetrical balance to emphasize on the products by three-column grid sets an asymmetrical balance to make us focus on the titles and descriptions. There are various grids structures to use. They can be simple or complex, specific or generic, tightly defined, or loosely interpreted to give balance, articulate hierarchy, and consistency in compositions. Grids are not visual elements we see at the end, but they are guidelines to help us arrange design elements quickly, give structure and guidance to our readers. The next time you go on a website, think about how the grid plays a part in the design and sets up rhythm for us to read. 7. Chapter 6 - Layouts and Compositions: People consume tons of content every day. But have you ever thought about the inner workings of how to design these content? In this lesson, we'll peel back the layers and break down how to help people understand the content better. Design is inherently a problem-solving industry. So what problem they layout and composition solve? At first-principle, they are designed to solve for a readability issue. A good layout and composition is the answer to the question. Does my design read? Can I understand what's happening? In today's digital age? The amount of content is vast and highly accessible. It comes in the form of motion pictures that help you disappear into the world of movies and TV. Informational and entertaining content on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Memorable goal like the photos we took on our last vacation with her family and friends, thought-provoking and helpful, like the news we read and shopping we do on the Internet. But how we actually consume these content is through the layers and composition that our eyes are seeing. This is done while our other senses, like touch and hearing, helps us process the complexity happening in front of us. Let's take a closer look. To understand Laos and composition. Well, we first need to know how our brain processes the things we see. Most of what we see in any medium is done through a long-term memory system that interprets information from our senses at high-speed. Keeping what's relevant and discarding what's not. This library of experiences or visual library acts automatically and subconsciously without much stress on our brainpower, even if we don't want to, for example, try not to read this. This is also the same system that helps us fill in the gaps of something that is otherwise imperfect and make sense of it. One example is the World Wildlife Fund logo. We know that this is a panda. Even if the lines are not connected. Yet, we hardly need to think about that. Anyone who has seen a pen up before, we'll have no problem recognizing it. So what actually helps us build strong layouts and compositions? We can successfully manipulate these design principles. We can create interesting layouts and compositions to help our viewers move through our designs. Let's look at some examples. Photos are one of the few forms of mediums that lets us see compositions directly. So let's start with this before moving into more complex mediums. The first image here title Earthrise by William Anders, who worked at nasa, took this in 1968. The reason why this image is so strong is because of a few things that had been worked into the composition. Contrast, emphasis, proportions, and harmony. But we will look at only contrasts and emphasis for this image. By turning the photo black and white reveals the inner workings of how contrast works in this photo. Know this from bottom to top. It goes in a pattern of light, dark and light. This helps our eyes read the image and the subjects easily. Second, emphasis, putting Earth in a surrounding emptiness of space while showing that this picture is taken from the Moon, helps us understand how small our planet really is. It gives us context of where the photo was taken as our eyes move between the lunar surface anchoring at the bottom and earth hanging in the middle of dark and serene space. This second photo is called lunch atop a skyscraper by Charles Clyde EBIT, taken in 1932. The two main elements that work into the composition here are contrast, rhythm. If we look closely, the background not only gives context to where in relation these people are to its surroundings, It's also a medium light value compared to the darker subject in the foreground, allowing us to read the subjects well. The rhythm established by the subject sitting in a row helps draw our eyes across the entire photo without fighting with a natural flow, enabling us to see the expressions of these workers without any other elements competing for our attention. Here's the last photo by on-time moose coal for National Geographic. Among all the principles in play, what stood out really strong or the balance, proportions and harmony. To see the balance better, we can draw two lines to divide the image in half, vertically and horizontally. When we do that, we see how Andre has employed asymmetrical balance. Each half is similar, but not exactly a mirror image of each other. This is a very simple and direct form of using asymmetrical balance. And we can play around with that to achieve different effects. Next up proportions. The diver and stingray are both at the same depth in real life. But by composing the photo this way on Play can better communicate the size of an adult human in relation to the stingray. Much long tail it has. So wow. And finally, we have harmony. Two forms of harmony are at play here. First is the harmony between the color of the sand and the subject. Because shooting this photo underwater gives the image and overall bluish tone. It blends the subject into the surrounding without clashing with each other. And this is done while maintaining enough contrast for us to read the image. Second is between the diver and stingray. The colors are similar enough that they feel different, yet one in the same. If we look closely, the patterns on both a diving suit and the stingray are similar. Now that our eyes have been trained to see compositions and photos, let's take a look at the same concepts being applied to apps and websites. First up is DoorDash. When we're hungry and browsing for a restaurant to order from Will indelibly arrive on this page. What works so well here is the use of proportions and emphasis. Proportions helps our eyes automatically draw to the restaurants section. This is because the most important content is the largest in size, while the less important parts takes less space. The intricate balance of the proportions also helps our eyes flow naturally and scan the content from the top left down to the bottom right of the page without having elements Pfeiffer unnecessary attention with each other. What's interesting here is that the navigation elements on top and filter elements on the left disappears only until we want to look for them. That's the job of harmony here. By letting the background color bleed through to the filter controls and adding shadows to the cart, it creates a visual depth. This depth is also what helps our eyes determine what content is more important. The second example here is Netflix. This one is interesting because it looks like there's a lot happening. But what it really is is a simple balance at play. If we divide the screenshot and half, we can clearly see how Netflix uses a symmetrical balance to help our eyes with that title. This treatment helps the feature show or movie takes center stage without having the image fight with the movie title, but balancing the layout this way they experience will not only be immersive in full-screen mode, but follows the natural flow of how we read. Our eyes naturally read the title, then move to the image to see if we like to watch the entire thing. If we choose to, we can click play and stop playing. If we choose not to, we can still proceed to explore the other offerings by scrolling further down. Notice how this way of organizing asymmetrical layout also persist at the bottom. Finally, we have Spotify. Can you guess which principles helps us layout read better? If you guess contrast, pattern, rhythm, and proportions, Right? But one thing that's interesting out of all of them is rhythm. Most people miss this out. But just like music, visual designs have visual rhythm to, it helps our brain understand what they are seeing when deploy correctly. Take a look at the list of songs on the UI. The column width, row heights, spacing between rows, font size, and colors are all consistent. This creates a pattern and a rhythm. Without having a visual indicator like a line across each row. Our eyes and brains have no problem understanding what is a single row in which album is related to which song title. In interactive mediums like this, rhythm can be established in both x and y-axis to form horizontal and vertical rhythm. Mastering the skill can help us deal with much more complex designs. Just imagine that we are asked to design the product page of Amazon. And our design has to support any number of products from one to potentially infinite. Rhythm will help our customers read what's on the page better using visual cues without cluttering it up. We looked at a field layout and composition examples from photos to interactive mediums. But there are really only two things to remember. First, build up your visual library to create good layouts and compositions requires us to tap into people's long-term memory. So the more examples you have in your head, it will help you design better. Second, practice, practice. Practice. Design is a craft-based skill. As much as it is a thinking skill, the more you repeat, the better you'll get. 8. Chapter 7 - Icons and Imagery: There's a saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. And to add to that, a picture can also carry a thousand meaning. A picture can be an icon as a symbolic metaphor to represent ideas, objects, and people. It can also be a photo or image as visual representation of people's realities. That's why images are great for explaining complex ideas by intricate graphs and historical contexts. Since icons and imagery can provide strong meanings to a piece, we'll now take a look at how to apply them into our designs. As we saw in the topography lesson, the earliest forms of writing and communication started as pictograms. Let's see what we can learn from history and understand how they became a common practice today. The most well-known example where cave paintings found in the Lascaux Cave in France. What made it special where the intricate documentation of animals that existed a long time ago. Another famous binding was the Altamira Cave in Spain. Here we discover what people's lives were like in the Paleolithic period, from their day-to-day to even how they hunt it. One interesting thing is that the drawings actually don't connect and correspond together. Because initial forms of writing are just symbolic representation of ideas. Humans and technology progress. And there was a need for a more robust form of writing and communication. The pictographs develop into representations of sounds and letters we have today. But the idea of using icons, illustrations, and imagery still remains. The alkyne of them has just evolved. We find them as videos and photos on Instagram to vectorize icons and illustrations on our favorite websites. There are just some things that cannot be described with words. By looking into the past, we saw that icon, illustrations and images are all good ways to capture a moment in time and tell a story. Let's see how this method of storytelling has evolved in modern days. There is no shortage of images used in modern days. The mouth-watering images and menus that only gets us more hungry. A stunning photo that tells a compelling new story. Two photos of a location in Google Maps that informs us of our correct location. The use of images, combined with other forms of layout is certainly an effective communication tool. To understand how to make full use of this effect, we need to first understand what story we are telling. The story ultimately acts as a guideline to drive the experience of our audience. Our story can exist in the form of a news article, e-commerce site, or an app. The hero of our story is always our user. We need to understand is journey and quests. Whether that might be getting to the right place, buying the right item, or learning a new skill. It is our job as designers to help the heroes complete the request. Once we have a hang of the story, we can look into how we choose to structure the story, balancing what we choose to use images and texts to communicate. Take an example of Google Maps. Users of Google Maps wants to explore new places or checkout if a restaurant is worth a visit. Texas, the best way to tell us the address and feedback. Images are better at showing whether we liked the ambiance and what Chile jam chicken looks like. Another example is the New York Times India pollution article. Using imagery from the perspective of mono and EMEA helps convey the story in a more personal way. This is especially important since the article is set in India, while a large part of the New York Times audience is set into us. Using powerful imagery like this helps the audience relate better with the situation far from their home. If we take a closer look at the article, we might also spot an interesting use of color. The New York Times chose to let the colors be the same as the images resulting in a harmonious design. This is a technique to try if you're in the situation where the images are clashing with the colors of your UI. N, those are some ways to use images in conjunction with our layouts. Extending on the concepts of images, we'll now take a look at how to apply icons and illustrations onto our layouts. Taking a look at another New York Times example, we can see planets and satellites represented icons and illustrations. The satellites orbiting around the planet help tell the audience where the satellites are in relation to the astral body and its trajectory. Having the same icon, both on the illustration and legend helps the audience map them together. One thing to note about the use of icons and illustrations, or detail and readability. The size of an icon or illustration is proportionate to the amount of details we need to have in order for the audience to read better. The reason for this is that our memory system, recall from the Laos and composition chapter, expects a certain amount of information in a given size for you to understand what your eyes are seeing. If the object is larger, say Jupiter, having the right color is not enough. There's a need to have the famous red circle and moving storm to help our audience, the star and the planet. But something as small as the satellite, like Voyager, is enough to have just a silhouette representation for our audience to know what that satellite is. Having more detail will actually make it harder to read because the iconic shape will no longer be recognizable. Because icons and illustrations are abstractions of real things. A blue dye can mean earth or a blue marble. It's important to give high contrast and readability when creating them. Otherwise, no one would know what it is. That's why icons and illustrations have the ability to tell powerful stories that can be represented with a photo, like how the ice is moving on Antarctica here. Be careful on using symbols that can mean different things in different cultures. Symbolism is highly context-dependent. Some symbols or images be okay in one place, but may not be okay in another. Things such as religious symbols are figures are very sensitive and cultural sense. Refrain from using symbols that are related to people's cultural values, but rather use symbols that are universally recognized. Imagery, icons and illustrations are all powerful mediums to add to your designs. The next time you run through an app, pay attention to how they use icons and images to take you through their flow. 9. Chapter 8 - Visual Communications: We've now come to an end of level-0 introduction to design. What a journey that we've been through. But there's just one more thing for you all. Here. We'll cover a concept that will help you put everything you have learned together. So what exactly is visual communication? Visual communication is a method of representing information to effectively create meaning through design. This can be done both in electronic and in print media. There are different ways of representing information in a graphical format. These includes infographics that translates data into images, interactive content that users interact with either physically or digitally, and motion graphics that convey a story through movement. It can also be applied to tangible assets and deliverables like branding and identity packages, presentation slides or posters and signage is. We can start to see how the past lessons, such as typography, colors, and layouts are applied in context. Now that we know what visual communication is, let's find out how we can use it to communicate the importance of ideas and concepts. The world is inundated with a never-ending stream of information, ideas and concepts. These can be conveyed in many different ways through writing, conversations and visuals. But let's take a closer look at the advantages of representing information visually. If we wanted to teach someone how to draw window, our instructions might look something like this. Draw a square, draw a horizontal line across the middle of the square, draw a vertical line down the middle of the square. While these instructions are fairly simple, we may run the risk of having them misinterpreted. The other way is to accompany the instructions with visual representations like so. Draw a square, draw a horizontal line across the middle of the square, dr vertical line across the middle of the square. Did you notice the differences in how they instructions were convey the exact same worst for use with only the addition of graphics as supplements. For clarity. Let's take it a step further. If we were to completely remove the written instructions and only use instructional graphics, this will still make sense. And thus live visual communication is so important. It gives clarity to complex ideas and leaves little room for misinterpretations. Visual communication isn't simply slopping on graphics with texts. There's purpose tied to it that helps us craft design stories. The two key factors, our audience and contexts. First off, audience, our audience or the people whom our product, service or media is aimed at. And understanding who they are can help us better target our contexts. Later. In the opening title sequence from the James Bond series, Quantum of Solace. Who do you think that title sequence is aimed at? Are they for the fans of the James Bond franchise or are they for the new viewers? The title is both familiar to fans of the series, yet done in a modern way to appeal to new viewers without knowing who it is for. This title sequence can be taken into many directions that might no longer feel like a James Bond movie. That brings us to the next factor. Contexts. Contexts defines the setting or situation in which something happens. This applies to product design or ideas in general, using the Starbucks brand as an example, if we wanted to show how the brand visuals were, we need to apply them in the context that will be seen by the user. When set it in context, what is in essence, an abstract brand becomes relatable and understandable. By defining our audience and contexts, we can apply the fundamentals learned in previous lessons to guide our audience through our work. Let's do a bit of a recap. We learned what visual communication is, why it's important, and how to use it to tell a story is now time to apply all your design knowledge into your work.