hopefully you've learned a lot from my graphic design videos about principles and rules but
how can we totally smash and break those rules as graphic designers how can we do this without the
final artwork being completely useless graphic design principles and rules are essential yes
especially to beginner or intermediate designers these rules are the foundation and a recipe for
functional and effective design that actually resonates with the audience
but there are ways those rules can be broken once in a while and today's video is all about
exploring those situations with the way the design industry is going learning how to prototype is a
no-brainer instead of putting flat files in front of your team manager or client imagine being able
to hand them a prototype that's so good it feels like a real app or website now learn more about
framer later in today's video the first rule is to use harmonic colors or colors that are relevant
to the design so think of things like greens used for organic products or blue for financial
designs and so on this rule most of the time is an absolute need however there are instances when you
can break this rule if your design is one where the message to the viewer is trying to cause a
jarring response this might be a good idea a mix of contrasting colors that typically do not go
well together will really grab the attention of the viewer but this should be used with caution
such a mix of colors will often create disharmony but that might be something the message wants to
evoke in your brief photographic design disordent colors can be seen in such work by milton glazer
who created designs for bob dylan always remember to understand the message before breaking any kind
of rule and speaking of which the next rule is to abide by the grid systems now grids have been
a highly useful tool within printing since the 1950s and designers have embraced them ever since
grits do cause harmony with alignment and they can lead a viewer's eye around
the design however there are times when breaking these grid systems is really useful
if you want to really grab the attention of the viewer's eye to a specific spot on your design
offsetting certain design elements totally out of the grid system can work well
so maybe use some overlapping imagery or placing text out of kilter and this could be a great way
to create some contrast and emphasis like with every rule break this takes some skill and it
does take some experience as you can see on this french poster notice the bold lettering
that totally overlaps the imagery in disregard of that vertical grid line this double poster is
very striking for multiple reasons but the text alignments that breaks all kinds of alignment
rules is one of the most striking again always look at the message or the personality of a design
these posters are about murder and something quite shocking the colors used do represent that with
contrasting reds and blacks but so does the use of breaking the grid system with the typography it is
just really jarring and unnerving to look at one rule that you will hear a lot from some designers
or people is that you should follow design trends this is a very specific rule for specific
situations and if you're asking me personally i never bring trends into logo designing
however if i'm designing something that is maybe part of a brand recognition so let's take for
example a billboard or a banner applying a design trend to that design exclusively could work well
but there are instances where we want to break the rule of trend following completely
and this is because as designers we tend to grow a lot more creatively if we make our own work
without those external influences in the case of trends it isn't a black or white situation
sometimes they are useful and sometimes they're not another rule that applies specifically to
logo designing is that you should always use colors that link back to that niche
sector so let's say you're designing something for a company that intends to be a new
social media platform after doing some research you realize the majority of social media platforms
either use blue or red in their branding so take a look at facebook twitter tumblr linkedin these
are all blues and then you have pinterest youtube and google plus that are all red
so if the brief and the research determines that a social media platform needs to totally stand
out for various different reasons then maybe it would be wise to use a totally different color
snapchats would be the prime example here seeing as they have used yellow in their logo design
so those are some ways that you can break rules and just remember always consider the message
and if the rule break will align with that message now you can have some fun with it and especially
with the grid systems because you can have fun overlapping and disjointing or jarring texts
but i still stand by the fact that beginner designers should always pretty much
stick to the bare central rules and principles because they always lead to
functional design now to announce the three winners of a recent logo design competition
on this channel i had tons and tons of entries and this week it was particularly hard to choose three
winners because there were so many decent logo designs but the first winner is by baja because
i feel this logo was very different from the other entries with its abstract shape both depicting a w
for wilson and also the roof of a house this did apply well to the real estate breeze that i gave
and that's why it's one of today's three winners next we have a design by silent c media and again
this was a very clever marriage of two different concepts into one logo mark i do like the choice
of fonts as with the previous design but here the layout is a bit off for me the real estate here
needs to be moved to the right to tiny bits and i think on the top design i would have stretched
it all of the way to the end of wilson but all in all it's a pretty good logo design
lastly a design by tolly and this design i feel was a very brandable and very clean logo the
colors chosen were great and actually i like the color schemes for all three lego designs
but the logo mark here is really smart it's simple and it's really official
the typography is truly on point as well and if we look at the original design and then compare
it to the redesign we can see how much better it is it could easily represent a real estate
brand with a professional touch and so a great job to everybody who entered in today's competition
and next week there will be a new one for you guys to enter the sponsor of today's video framer is a
no code free to use tool making it easy for anyone to become a prototyper now their mission is to
help you get closer for real create your own smart components complete with multiple states without
any code as well as drop in pre-built components with the insert menu and make your own delightful
custom animations 100 visually so in just a couple of hours you could have a new skill that helps you
stand out from the crowd sign up to frame for free at framer.com forward slash satori graphics
and that link is down in the description box below but yeah if you want to learn more about graphic
design do click a video on screen and until next time design your future today peace you