Principles of designing

Media designers - those who create newspapers, magazines, web pages, advertising, and any other visual media image - operate with a basic set of principles, just as artists, musicians and writers do. Certain visuals are more appealing to you when you view them. Usually, this is not an accident; it is the result of careful planning based on design principles. Here are some design principles that need to be addressed when taking photographs or video or constructing web pages or newspaper layout.

These are the important points need to be consider at the time of advertising designing.

1. Balance
2. Proportion
3. Repetition and Variety
4. Sequence
5. Unity
6. Emphasis and Economy

Balance

Most of us prefer that our lives have balance. Most of us do not like living "on the edge." We want order to our lives. The same is true in design. Balance is the first principle of design. Balance has to do with the way you distribute the weight on each side of an image or layout. You give as much "weight" to the left side as to the right side, the top and the bottom. This is called symmetry.

There are numerous ways to achieve symmetry. A symmetrical page in a publication would have the left side and the right side of the page balanced. Doing this occasionally is fine, but having everything balanced in a media design all the time is boring. Yes, we like balance in our loves, but we don't like looking at symmetrical things often. That's why movies rarely work when they deal purely with "ordinary," everyday life.

Look at the photograph above. It has mirror image symmetry, but it is not particularly compelling.

Proportion

This is something that should work naturally. It is simply arranging spaces in the picture in pleasing relationship. The bigger something is, the more space it should receive. Book pages are proportional, i.e. they have good shape in height versus width. You don't have to have identical size margins on all side in all types of publications. The same would be true of web pages. Something may be heavier on the left than on the right.

Another way to think proportionally is to assume that things that are more important are made larger. Therefore, the more important items are larger than the less important items. Look, again, at the Palm Beach Post front page. What is the most important item? Is it the largest? The most important item should be the photo of the confrontation between Buddhist monks and the police since it's the largest item on the page.

Repetition and Variety

You'll want to keep both of these in mind. Repetition is repeating visual elements to create a pattern. Gestalt psychology tells us that our minds like patterns (and often look for them even when they may not be there). it is pleasing to the eye to find these patterns in the things that you want to photograph and to create them in your media designs.

Conversely you'll also want to look for variety, which breaks the pattern of repetition. This helps to keep the viewers's attention. We don't like to look at the same thing over and over. Variety breaks up the monotony and gives us a surprise at times. take a look at this photo and think about how these two are working together.

Sequence

This is an idea that you'll think about specifically with web or newspaper design. Simply, you do not leave to chance the order in which a reader perceives objects on a page or screen. This concept goes naturally with the idea of balance and proportion.

Example of Newspaper sequence

1. Readers in the Western world generally read from left to right, top to bottom
2. But, readers also move from big to little, black to white, color to non-color, from unusual shapes to ordinary shapes. You can move readers with lines or imagined lines that might do all sorts of things such as extend into another element on the page.
3. This means that you as a designer can move readers' eyes in sequence all over the page if you plan carefully.

Unity

This deals with harmony. Everything should and must look as if it fits together. This applies to photographs in such a way the elements should cohere. Everything in the photograph should strive to be its own little piece of art.

Emphasis and Economy

These two should be considered together. With emphasis you want to train yourself to look through the viewfinder and focus on a single visual element. Decide what the focal point of the event is and then position the camera accordingly. With economy you'll want to eliminate everything not necessary to communicate the information. Frame the shot so that all the other things that distract from the focal point are out of the photo. for more information kindly visit youtube video