What makes good design?

Earlier this year, I created my very own instructional manual for the card game UNO! You might have seen this in my introduction blog, but if not, here's how it looks like:

To create effective designs, ensure it's audience appropriate, fulfills a purpose, is easy to understand, aesthetically pleasing, and original.

1. Audience appropriate

What is your target audience? If your target audience is kids, then a black and white color palette with huge blocks of text screams boring, and not very trustworthy. To ensure your design is audience appropriate, follow these guidelines:

Define your audience - In addition to your audience’s demographics, you need to dig a little deeper. What drives them? What are their beliefs and values? With which other companies are they engaging?

• Create personas: Step into the shoes of your users. Dream up some real-life scenarios and play them out. What happens when your persona reads your manual? What are their expectations? How easily will they understand your instructions?

• Speak their language: A 20 year old has a different vocabulary than a 50 year old. Take a look at your competitors and analyze how they're communicating to their target audience. What works? What doesn't?

• Pick your visual elements accordingly: A younger audience wants to see more colors, and images, while an older audience may find these elements annoying or gaudy. So choose your images, typography and colors accordingly.

2. Fulfills a purpose

Every design should be useful, understandable, and unobtrusive. Designs aren't made just to be beautiful, but to solve a problem. Before you start designing, ask what the design needs to achieve. What problem are you trying to solve? For my UNO manual, the purpose of the design was to teach young adults how to play UNO.

3. Easy to understand

Designs should be easy to comprehend. If you have dense blocks of text, or ambiguous titles, headings, or buttons, then that's bad design. Good designs should make it easy for users to find the information they need. Titles should have the largest font, headings should be smaller than your body text, use colons, lists, and bullet points. Our attention spans are shorter now than ever, so good design should immediately capture your users' attention.

4. Aesthetically pleasing

Good design should adhere to the basic design principles. By doing so, you’ll have an aesthetically pleasing design that will capture your users' attention.

The basic design principles are as such:

• Contrast: Is there enough contrast between each of the different visual elements?

• Repetition: Does the design show a certain flow by implementing repetition and rhythm among visual elements?

• Alignment: Is there order and organization in the design due to the proper use of alignment?

• Proximity: In what proximity are the elements placed, and does this create a connection between elements?

5. Original

While nothing is truly original as we may take inspiration from other people's work. To avoid legal trouble, don't plagiarize. Be original in your design. Every company is unique, and the designs should be too. Some companies have "style guides", which are guidelines for colors, typography, and images so that document designs are standardized. If you're creating your own company and logo, then create your own original logo. Plus, it's more fun this way.