Explore Design

What is Design?

What do billboards, logos, websites, magazines, video games, indoor spaces, and even grocery store aisles have in common? They are all the projects of designers. The intentional, creative, and original work is called design. Design is the process of creating items like those in the previous list, along with many more visual and everyday items to appeal intentionally to a specific audience. In marketing, it's used to draw in customers.

Designers must consider multiple components that vary depending on the project and the audience. Designers often need to be familiar with using a combination of text and images to appeal to human emotions and convey a certain message or relevant information. For example, certain colors might be associated with certain emotions or events, such as black with death in western cultures, and designers will utilize these colors to help the piece achieve its purpose. Whether the designer is working on a website or working to create an appealing storefront, clarity of information and visual appeal are essential.

A successful designer must understand the various elements of design in order to be effective in the organization and the flow of information. Commonly-recognized elements of design include the aforementioned color, as well as form, texture, lines, shape, and typography. There are other principles of design as well, principles which are beneficial to know (such as contrast and proportion). All these elements and principles convey information. For example, using jagged lines might create a tense mood in a viewer, while using bright colors, bold lines, and traditional shapes would help a product appeal to kids.

Because this form of visual communication transcends written language and helps bridge different cultures, design impacts a large audience. It's relevant to art, literature, economics, education, and more. Furthermore, we encounter design everyday.