1. What is design?

From decluttering your old closet to preparing your next vacations, design is a process for planning anything. For graphic, visual, and digital designers, the end goal is to deliver a visual message that communicates the solution to a problem.

Design is a complex discipline but does not have to be difficult. To make it easier, you can start practicing the following 3 key design fundamentals to help you take your content to a higher level: white spaces, typography, and colour contrast.

2. White spaces

It is very common to have the temptation to fill every space on your canvas with different elements (titles, paragraphs, headings, links, images, icons, etc.) Instead, you can use a couple of techniques to balance your work.

Whites spaces around elements

Work the unused areas of your document (a.k.a. white spaces, negative spaces, or empty spaces) to balance your design. How to?

1. Use wider margins around the borders of your page

2. Group your elements (headings, images, etc) by hierarchy and relationship, then leave a wide white space around each grouping

3. Take each element of your groupings and leave a bit of white space around them

Less is more

To improve your designs, take the approach “less is more”.

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Always ask yourself: “is there anything else I can remove without affecting the core message of my work?”

Automatically, you will improve the appeal of your work.

3. Easy with typography

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“Typography simply refers to the methodology of positioning and styling type, but a lot of technical knowledge is required to master type design: the anatomy of letterforms; rules for kerning, tracking, and leading; type style classifications; etc, etc, etc.”

You are not expected to be that technical. Instead, follow 2 basic rules:

• to start, work with 1 or 2 fonts only
• you can use the default font sizes of the program you are working on

What about styles?

• the more stylized a font is, the harder to read is, so leave it for headings
• people scan headings instead of reading, so make headings short
• use basic traditional fonts for the body text because they are more readable

4. Colour contrast

Colours are used to grab attention. A good use is working with contrasted colours.

• Use simple and high colour contrast schemes, it helps with accessibility as well

• Use contrasting colours to emphasize important elements of your design and drive attention to them

Colour combinations

Colours are not easy to find, even designers struggle to use colours the right way.

• For text, use black and/or dark grey
• For buttons, links, or accents, always use the same contrasted colour

Some final considerations about colours:

• Analogue colours are for smooth moods
• Contrasted or complementary colours work well for call-to-actions (CTAs)
• Colours and emotions are related, so the colours you decide to choose will have an impact on your audience

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Do you want to understand the psychological effects or the meanings of colours? Read the following article from 99designs: Colors and emotions: how colors make you feel