For this post, I wanted to look at the various designs that I see every day, and evaluate them based on the elements I learned of design from Vignelli and other sources. Design surrounds us, and these are not the only designs I see daily walking from my apartment to my college campus. These designs show four important elements, however.
Dominance
Dominance helps guide the audience’s eye throughout the design. This Grubhub advertisement is a fantastic design. It uses good colors to evoke hunger and vegetables, and the typography is very readable. Where this advertisement succeeds the most, however, is in how it guides the eye with its use of dominance. The bowl of salad draws the audience’s eye in because of the way that it contrasts the very rectangular poster. From there, the “Grubhub” text has sub-dominance and draws the eye next because of the larger text size and bright color in an area of the advertisement that is mainly black and white. Then, the “All food, no lines” headline draws the eye because of its larger text size. Finally, the audience’s eye stops at the body text. This design does have one more level of dominance than the recommended three levels, but it works well because it gives the audience an area to enter the design and then draws the eye throughout the design.
Symbol
Symbols and icons make designs easier to understand, and they surpass language. This crosswalk sign is a great way to quickly and easily catch the attention of cars in order to not injure pedestrians. The bright yellow color draws the eye due to how yellow tends to distract, but the icon is important to helping drivers understand quickly, which is vital when one is driving. Icons and symbols are processed faster and work better than text may. Icons also go beyond language, so even if I don’t speak English, I can understand that people will walk where the sign is pointing to. This design is great for quick understanding that most, if not all, people who are driving should understand.
Color
Color is one of the most important elements of design in my eyes; it draws attention as well as conveying emotions. The design of this emergency alarm is not good. It is not very intuitive, and the “Emergency” text can only be understood if you speak English. The worst aspect of this design is the choice of color, however. I assume the designer wanted to evoke the image of the police with the color, but blue is widely seen as a calm color which is the opposite of how one feels in an emergency. As well, blue does not draw attention in the same way as other colors do. If I were to change the color of this design, I would make it bright red. Red is used in emergency situations, such as in “Exit” signs and firetrucks, and it draws the eye more than blue.
Balance
Balance is the arrangement of elements in a design, and it is important to creating unity in a design. This sign is a great design. It has a good understanding of dominance, and the typography is clear and easy to read. The balance of the design is what makes it such a pleasure to look at, however. There is an equal visual weight on both vertical halves of the design because both have some text and then the rest of the half is filled with images. It also has a good visual weight on both horizontal halves because the tight text has roughly the same visual weight as the smaller and more spread out images. The only way I would improve the balance of the design would be to switch the text on the right side to be at the bottom. That way, the slightly larger visual weight of the images would be more balanced for each horizontal half.
Conclusion
Overall, this DesignBlitz was a great way to understand how design impacts my daily life. First of all, it showed me just how many designs I see each day. Beyond just posters, I see objects that people designed to suit a purpose, like the crosswalk sign. This DesignBlitz also showed me which designs were better and worse because the really good designs and the really bad designs caught my attention more and held it for longer than the alright designs did.
Within my work on literary journals and as a writer, I’ve learned that form should fit function. That just means that the way something is made should fit the reason it is made. This phrase can be further applied to design. The choice of colors, placement, text size, so on and so forth should fit why a design has been made.
Please engage with this post in the comments! Whether that be through your own examples of designs you see in daily life or through further analysis of my examples, discussion is a great way to learn more about design!
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