Title: What makes a good design?
Course: Technology Applications

taken/modified from http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/courses/arts350/aesthetics.html

1.) Importance
What's the most important thing in this layout? Is it the most important, most attractive or most convincing part of the message? What's next? What's last? Once you know what's most important, use visual emphasis...perhaps make it bigger than the rest, change its color, or think about where it should be placed.

2.) Contrast or Opposites -big/little, crowded/open, orange/blue.
Contrast help's get people's attention which helps you set importance, focus attention and create drama.

3.) Balance -creating a gravitational axis.

6.) Rhythm -variety and pattern.
Variety relieves the eye, and pattern helps the mind make sense of it. In multipage works, rhythm creates pacing across the whole.

7.) Flow -leading the eye across the surface.
This should happen in a desired sequence.

8.) Depth -leading the eye beyond the surface, or making things jump out from the surface.
Depth is the most inherently contradictory illusion of 2D design, and therfore, one of the most compelling.

9.) Scale -the illusion of size.
The size of elements relative to one another is important, of course, but the size of things in relation to the format and the size of the format itself are also worth considering.

10.) Movement -the illusion of physical interaction among elements.
Usually figurative -with elements angled or poised like bodies in motion -movement can also be created with such optical effects as linear repetition, visual vortexes and the like. Used deliberately, suggested movement can have a marked emotional and physical impact on a viewer.

11.) Unity -that which holds the piece together.
Color can unify a design, as can a grid, visuals that represent related subjects or a consistant style of imagery. In an age of over-stimulation and cacophony, unity is often underrated.

Balance doesn't have to be symmetry. By opposing dense detail with open space, or heavy elements with lighter ones, balance can be asymmetric and, again, athletic.