Pretty in sync
You know it’s about time to put that empty wall into good use. Your dining area, living room or bedroom could use some added styling, functionality or some means of entertainment and you’re just contemplating on what kind of wall upgrade to get.
Hanging artwork, photos or lighting improves room aesthetics for better ambience. For extra storage, seating or shelving, you’ll need furniture. If you just want to please your sight and hearing senses, a TV, sound systems or other electronic devices can usually satisfy your leisurely needs.
Whatever purpose your upgrade serves, how attractive your wall turns into is just as important. Like beauty and brains, the design is a totally different aspect from the functionality but you’ll want to get the best of both worlds. You’re practically looking at that wall everyday so it has to be visually designed fittingly as it is useful.
Visual design is both an art and a science that synchronizes aesthetics with logic. This practice of arranging lines, shapes, colors, texture, typography — all the visual elements — makes the information you share or receive more attractive, perceivable and easily understandable.
Purpose driven design
Well-designed content improves viewer experiences by:
Enhancing your content. The right choice of colors, graphics, fonts — themes, visual design can stimulate your viewers’ mindsets by invoking certain emotions and consequently priming them. Aligned with your objectives, your unified designs can make the information you’re sharing significantly more influential and compelling.
Showing without the need of telling. Adding real-world and accustomed touches into your designs makes your content more clear and unambiguous as familiar objects decrease the required learning curve for users. Affordance, a situation where an object intuitively implies its functionality, applied into your designs makes your content more familiar and ultimately easier to perceive.
Making an impression. You get to express personality and character and also show a reflection of attitude through your medium.
Decluttering. Simple, clean and minimalist designs which use a lot of white space reduce cognitive throughput required from viewers helping them focus on to which information is vital. Applying affordance techniques also minimizes the need for text explanations and sets proper design balance resulting in content that is easier to perceive.
Gestalt psychology suggests the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — our minds instinctively fill in additional information. Give your viewers the right perspective and use visual design techniques to let them see the bigger and better picture.
