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Every printed or electronic item you see or read - a newspaper, a web site, a billboard, a book cover, even a highway exit sign - has been put together with some form of intention so that (if done right) it's easier for you to read and understand.

That's graphic design.

Without good graphic design, the meaning of road signs could be difficult to grasp, possibly increasing the number of accidents. Slick magazine ads could have their messages lost or totally ignored if they are designed poorly, wasting lots of money. Websites would be frustrating to navigate and essentially useless if they were merely tossed together any old way they fit. And woe is the poor potential New York Times bestseller if the title is unreadable. It will sit at the bottom of a pile until it becomes

remaindered.

How do you know if something is designed well?

The answer is that you don't. Bad graphic design sticks out like a Great Dane at a Chihuahua convention. Good graphic design is invisible. It doesn't call attention to itself; it merely does its job. If something is well designed, it's easy to read, you know what to look at first, and its message is communicated.

Because good graphic design is about communication. The designer's goal is to communicate with you, the reader, in the most effective way possible. That's why traffic signs use large letters and certain color combinations: for them to work, they need to be as visible as possible from a distance. That's why magazine and newspaper advertisements for swanky stores use pretty headlines and a lot of white space - because this type of design is meant to convey a message that a store is sophisticated. That's why flyers for discount stores have lots of colors and big letters - they want to communicate the message that sales are exciting and you should act now! That's even why fast food restaurants are often decorated with colors like reds and oranges - scientific studies have proven that these colors are stimulating, which makes people eat faster and leave, giving a restaurant a higher table turnover rate, which helps them make more money.

If this is starting to feel like a conspiracy against you, the viewer, you may be partially right. Good graphic design gets people down the highway, gets people into the stores, gets people to shop at your website.

It's not enough for a graphic designer simply to be a good artist. Artists may know what looks attractive, and what they want to say in their paintings or illustrations, but graphic designers don't have that luxury. They usually work for someone else who pays the bills, so their designs have to do the best job possible for that person and their company. But a designer does need to have some artistic flair in order to make that piece of communication look good.

The art of making that particular printed or electronic item "look good" depends on following the basic principles of graphic design. Those are:

1. Contrast. The human eye sees because of contrast between light and dark. Our caveman ancestors would be in big trouble if they couldn't distinguish between the saber-toothed tiger and the savannah it was running through. Similarly, if a design contained all light or all dark elements, it would be difficult to read. Our eyes like contrast in size, shape, tone, texture and direction. This is why a sale flyer might have photos of differing size and colors - it would hold your attention better than if the designer used photos that were all the same size and all had the same blue background-bo-ring!

2. Balance. What if you saw

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