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To be a Graphic Designer you need to know the Fundamental Graphic Design elements that every design project has on it, on this post I will show you them and how to use them in your next Graphic Design project.
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The line is one of the basic elements of Graphic Design, a line is used to connect two or more points, but Graphic design is usually used to divide the space and to focus the eye on a specific location. There can be different types of Lines, fat, thin, wavy, and any form you can imagine to connect two points, and every type of line has a different feeling.
You can easily see lines in every graphic design project or illustration as they are used as graphic elements, textures, patterns, and backgrounds. When working with lines it’s also important to pay attention to weight, texture, style, and color because the variety of these qualities can produce different emotions or the visual effect on the eye.
Color is one of the most important elements of graphic design and the most obvious, in design we can use color for everything as it can be applied to the background, lines, shapes, or other graphic elements in the composition.
Color in graphic design is very important as every single color generates different emotions and it’s used to transmit these emotions through the full composition and have an effect on your mind.
Maybe many people think that color is an easy graphic design fundamental, but this is not true due as many colors don’t work well together for the eye and they might transmit opposite feelings, that is why is important to learn the Color Theory on Graphic Design to work perfectly with color, and you can check my post where I will show you everything about color theory and color meaning.
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The shape is also one of the most basic elements in Graphic Design. Shapes in design have two dimensions and are measured by their height and width, and they are defined by boundaries such as lines, color, or negative space, and in some way, we can say that all visual elements are shapes.
In graphic design, there are two main types of shapes, Geometric and Organic shapes.
Geometric shapes in graphic design are the ones that can be drawn by using a ruler or compass, and geometric shapes produce a feeling of control or order whether they are simple or complex.
On the other hand, organic shapes in graphic design are the opposite, these shapes can be drawn freehand, and also you can find these shapes in nature that is where his name comes from, and these shapes produce a natural feel to the eye.
Shapes in design are very important to communicate ideas in a visual way due to the interaction of these shapes between them. You can easily see an example of this by looking at street signs and symbols.
It’s also well to know that shapes in graphic design are many times used as the foundation of every project and they help you to organize and separate the content from your design work.
Size is also one of the basic elements in graphic design, as usually the bigger elements catch your attention faster than the smaller ones, and size or scale is used in graphic design to create more dynamic design projects and to focus the eye on certain elements of the design.
You can use scale and size in shapes, lines, typography, or other design elements to give more variety to your composition and avoid boring designs. If you want to learn more about the size and other graphic design principles you can check my post about graphic design principles.
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Graphic design projects are visually based and you can’t touch them physically (unless you have designed packaging) it’s important to transmit the look and feel of the elements through the eye, and that is why we use textures in Graphic Design. The texture is a physical quality of a surface, and we can mimic the texture feeling in design in illustrations or by images representing the surface we want to transmit.
People have memorized the texture of certain things and by looking at them they already know-how will be the touch them, that is why texture images work well in graphic design, as the viewer can feel the touch of the visual object because he already knows how it feels in real life. A quick piece of advice is that you don’t go overboard with the use of texture in your design because it can be overwhelming to the eye of the viewer.
Space is a vital graphic element and many times is underestimate and many rookie graphic designers have “horror vacui” and avoid completely blank space. Space is the area around the graphic elements in a design project, and it can be used to give the eye a rest and focus on other graphic elements in the compositions, or it can be used as other graphic elements by using negative space and create hidden shapes as you can see on the FedEx Logo Design.
Last but not least, the last Basic Graphic Design element is typography, and the Typography definition is the style or appearance of text. It’s very important to choose the right font to you Design project because at it happens with colors, every typography style has their own feeling and they transmit different emotions.
You can find playful, serious, elegant, minimalistic, and many more typography styles, and when you create a graphic design project you need to choose a font that goes well with the message you want to transmit with your design. Also, it’s important to know that there are many decorative fonts that are called display fonts, and these fonts are created to be used as titles or in small amounts of text by their decorative nature.
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In conclusion in this post, I show you the basic graphic design elements and now you can easily differentiate the small details in every design project, now you need to put all these design elements together and create amazing Graphic Design Projects! If you want to master these fundamental elements you can check these articles.
If you found this post useful you might like to read these post about Graphic Design Inspiration.
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