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 a magazine ad that had all the elements scrunched up into the top? Or if it had a gigantic headline at the top and very little on the bottom? It probably would be more uncomfortable for you to read than something that had a nicely balanced design. The imaginary point around which all of the elements balance is sometimes called the fulcrum, or "optical center." Optical center is in the center of the page, about a quarter of the way down from the top. Studies of human vision show that this is where the eye goes first. The graphic designer's job is to guide the eye through his or her design by keeping this "see-saw" in balance. Some things take up more visual "weight" than others. There can be big, light colored photos, small, dark photos, irregularly shaped illustrations, large blocks of text, and small blocks of text. All of these elements need to be arranged around this fulcrum so that the overall design looks balanced, for best visual communication.
3. Proportion. This refers to the sizing relationship of one element to another. Some are more attractive than others. A square, because it is perfectly proportioned, tends to be less interesting than a rectangle, which has a more interesting proportional ratio. And when a designer combines different elements in a design, keeping them in proportion to each other keeps the reader's interest better than if everything was out of whack.
4. Rhythm. Humans like order. We like repetition. It makes us comfortable. That's why we like poetry, and Dr. Seuss. But we don't like so much repetition that it gets dull. Just enough to keep us interested, to keep us reading through a magazine article, web site or book. For example, in a book, we like that all of the chapter titles are in the same typeface and placed at about the same location on the page. It creates a rhythmical order.
5. Harmony. You might be thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. Harmony AND contrast? Isn't that a contradiction? Well, sort of. While we want things to be different, we still want them to go well together. Think of a barbershop quartet. All the members are singing the same song, but their voices are different enough so it doesn't sound dull. If all of the elements in a design are perfectly balanced in every single way all the time, that would make reading (and coming away with the designer's desired message) a ponderous task. This is why a designer might use only two different typefaces that look nice together, instead of showing the world how many typefaces she has in her computer (don't laugh - you may have seen flyers like this.)
6. Movement. Think of the way your eye reads a line of text. It moves across the page, doesn't it? It moves - at least in Western culture - from left to right and from top to bottom. So should a design move. The graphic designer wants to direct the reader's eye through the elements on the page in a way that is both comfortable to read and helps get the message across. If all of the elements sit there like one blob, or if the text is on the top and the headline is on the bottom, the design is not going to be as successful.
7. Unity. The individual elements of the design - headline, text, illustrations, whatever - need to relate to each other and to the total design to make a cohesive whole. Sometimes people only have a second or two to get an impression from a design (for example, when you are flying past a billboard). If there is no unity, that impression may be lost. For example, if a designer has a small block of text, a couple of photos, and a headline, they will be more unified if arranged into a logical grouping than if they were placed randomly all over the page with lots of space between and among each one. It confuses the reader and makes the design "fly apart."
Graphic design is a complex art that can take years and even decades to master. But like a good design, if broken down into its elements, a good designer can create - and give his or her reader - a better understanding.