In this video, we're going to put some design principles into action
so you can feel confident using them to make design decisions in Canva.
As we learned, emphasis makes elements in a design stand out.
There are lots of ways we can emphasize something.
Take this design for example.
We can make this text box stand out by making it
bigger, bolder, or brighter than everything around it.
Like this.
The way we've emphasized this text is in contrast to the other text around it,
which leads us to our next principle.
In the context of visual design, contrast is the difference between elements in a composition.
For example, let's add a circle by pressing the C key.
Right now, the circle doesn't tell us much as it's the only element on the page.
We can't tell how big or small it is or how far away it is from us.
To suggest that we need another visual element. Here's a smaller circle.
By placing this new object next to the original one, we now create contrast by context.
By contrast, we can now tell that our first circle is bigger hinting it's probably more important.
But what if we have two circles at the same size?
This time, to achieve contrast, we can make it darker.
Now, the darker circle is perhaps closer to us or more important.
And it certainly grabs our attention.
Contrast creates interesting relationships between the visual elements.
It can push elements away, connect them, or complement them.
Without contrast, visual elements can be meaningless.
White space, otherwise known as negative space, is the unused or empty space in a design.
It can help our eyes take a rest. It helps a design breathe
and avoid overwhelming viewers with too much information.
Let's see how we can utilize space in the following example.
An easy way to ensure any design has appropriate breathing room is to use margins.
We can show margins here. This gives us an even area of negative space
around the outside of the page to house all our design elements neatly.
As you can see, elements are protruding into this margin area.
So let's adjust them like this.
We can adjust spacing, move, and resize elements to create more negative space and breathing room.
Movement is how the human eye interacts with your design.
The most important element in your design should be the first thing people see.
Followed by the second and third.
Think of movement as a compass guiding viewers around your design.
Take these circles, for example.
At the moment, the viewing order or direction is not very clear.
But what happens if we rearrange the circles like this?
Now, we have clear movement from left to right.
Repetition is a great tool to reinforce consistency in your design.
There are lots of ways we can create repetition in elements.
Take these shapes, for example.
For cohesive flow, we can change them all to circles.
We can make sure they're all aligned the same
and use the same colours in a repeated treatment.
Now, we have a design that looks much more uniform.
Proportion refers to the size of elements in relation to each other.
The larger an object is, the more likely you are to notice it.
Therefore, the more important it is.
In this example, the most important element is the title.
So let's make that the biggest
and other elements smaller.
Alignment gives designs order, structure, and organization.
It creates a flow through designs and can connect related elements.
In Canva, we can align design elements by looking for smart guides that appear
when they auto-detect alignment, while we're moving around the editor like this.
We can also align elements using margins and guides this way.
We can align text to the left, middle, right, or justify the alignment,
which means aligning it to both left and right edges.
The Position button makes the designers job easy.
It evenly spaces and aligns individual elements taking the guesswork out for us.
To use it, select multiple elements on your page and click Position.
Here, you can choose whether to align elements with each other like this
or you can space elements evenly.
This option detects the two elements that are furthest apart from one another
and evenly distributes the middle elements between them.
Handy, huh?
When adding elements to your design, it's important to understand that
every element has a weight to it whether it's in the form of size, color, tone, or texture.
Balance or imbalance refers to how the visual weights of these elements
are distributed within your design.
For example, here, we can see most of the elements are on one side of the page creating imbalance.
This might be intentional, but if we move or add some elements to the other side,
things start to feel more ordered.
We can also use guides to help us position elements like this.
By rearranging these elements, we've created an asymmetrical, balanced design.
Let's try a symmetrically balanced design where both sides mirror each other.
Now, we know how to improve our designs to work visually using our design principle skills.
Ready to see what's next?