7 Basic Elements of Graphics Design
By Adekola Oyategbe
The elements of graphics design are very simple and easy to understand. Comparing the initial period of art in the elementary class to this digital graphics design time where your colouring pen is now your mouse and your canvass is now on your screen. Even your imagination is trained under auspicious rules of software like Photoshop or CorelDraw.
Here are the 7 basic elements of graphics design which a good graphic designer combines to make a complete convincing graphics design.
Shapes
Shapes make core elements of art because they are the most basic building blocks for human arts. Have you ever wonder why shape tools are in most graphics design software? It is because most designer starts out with shapes. So if you want to start creating your designs, decide on shape.
Lines
Lines are different from shapes since lines don’t close up. They are the dividers and organizers of space in a graphic. They move the eye into the different sections of an image and create major forms that span one point to another. Lines can be connecting lines, perspective lines, borders, dividers etc. In digital graphics software today line tools have become even more advanced with features making lines vary in thickness, color and style. They can be simple, broken, dotted, curved and patterned. Use lines in a design to direct the eye and establish a certain kind of perspective.
Colours
Colour is a given graphic design element. With the eyes of humans capturing several million hues of colour it is not hard to imagine why colour is such an important tool in graphic design. Colours convey feelings and emotions in people. They can be hot, cold, complimentary are contrasting. Even the absence of colour says something about a graphic design. Graphics editing software offer several palette combinations with you being able to actually create your own custom colours with the creative adjustments of the combinations of some other ones. Use colours to solidify the feeling and purpose of your graphic design.
Shadows/Lighting
Shadow and lighting effects have become more easier to add to art these days with the use of design software. These effects make shapes and lines stand out from a picture making them look more three dimensional. So if you want you circle to look like a sphere, or your triangle into a pyramid then you should add these elements to your graphic to make them come out.
Textures
To add extra realism to your shapes, textures are used as another important design element. Textures basically make a shape look like it is made of some sort of material. The surface of shapes in their raw form in a drawing will always be smooth. Add a brick wall texture or concrete tiled texture to a rectangle shape for example and you give it a new and more realistic look. This is different from just colouring the rectangle in simple red brick as it includes the subtle shadows, lighting and reflections that most real objects display.
Typography
A relatively new design element is typography. In the past, artists where limited to their own hands when adding text to their works of art. Now, it is easy enough to add text, with a myriad amount of styles to your artwork. Use text in your design to add actual readable messages to your design. Also, you can use letters and words themselves as actual shapes that you can use for artful effects.
Pictures
Lastly we have pictures. Integrating some real elements captured from cameras is another relatively new development in terms of art. Pictures captured from reality can be taken, distorted or enhanced to improve the look and feel of your graphic design. Sometimes pictures are edited to add a surreal effect to them as they get integrated into a graphic design.
