Spotlight on Contrast: A deep dive into this design principle
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These letters are in color, as opposed to the rest of the black text. Not only are the color-changing letters animated (juxtaposed with static text), but there is a contrast between the letter colors themselves. Any digital or physical interface, even a minuscule dot of ink on a paper, automatically has an element of foreground and background. What’s unique to web design is not only the vast options of background-types, but also the fact that a background can change dynamically as the site visitor interacts with it. Any such element can choose to be static or interactive — changing dynamically on its own or triggered by user interaction.
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Key Milan design week installations
While color is an extremely important aspect of contrast, there are contrast of type, alignment and size to consider. Colors hold immense power in the world of design, and the principle of contrast truly comes to life when applied to hues and shades. Through color contrast, designers can harness this power to create energy, evoke emotions, and establish a clear visual hierarchy.
How does contrast relate to other design principles?
MailChimp, an email marketing platform, uses contrast effectively on its landing pages. They utilize bright, bold colors for their CTA buttons against a muted background, making it virtually impossible for visitors to miss their next action step. One such tool is Adobe XD, which provides an option to check color contrast right in the design process, helping ensure your design is not just appealing, but also accessible. Similarly, Sketch, another popular design tool, also offers plugins like Stark that allow you to test your design’s color contrast easily. What caught our eye among the rich variety of page content is the body of text at the very top, which includes a short paragraph of three sentences. Three contrasting relationship exist within six lines alone, the most unique being the animated word “diverse”.
Analogous Colors
You can create contrast by using colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, or by using different shades, tints, or tones of the same color. This can help to highlight specific elements, create a certain mood, or guide the viewer’s attention. We can’t stress the importance of texture enough, but in this case, the two concepts go hand in hand. In interior design parlance, texture refers to the way we perceive that design elements feel. For example, imagine how different it would feel to run your hand over the cool and bumpy tile backsplash versus the smooth table top in the picture above.
Shapes
These can include a range of dark to light components, an array of textures, or even an assortment of colors. The placement of elements can create a sense of balance, imbalance or asymmetry. For example, if you were to create a high contrast painting, with all the light focussed in one area, the viewer’s eye would be drawn to the lightest areas first and generally ignore the concentration of shadows. Think about leading the viewer’s eye in, so that they first notice the focal point, then other salient elements. The way the viewer’s attention is progressively grabbed by different elements in the painting is called rhythm.
Contrast attracts the eye, adds visual interest to a composition and can be in many different forms. Here, we explore four types of contrast that will elevate your design game. Contrast is not just black and white - understanding the importance of contrast in graphic design and exploring different types of contrast will elevate your design deliverables. For starters, it means determining what the first thing is that you want the viewer to look at. Technically, it is the visible difference in properties of the design elements.
The mindsets you hold, consciously or subconsciously, shape how you feel, think, and act–and... Make it look different by varying the stroke, fill, or pattern of the element. You can also apply an effect or style to the element to make it pop. In this example, you can see that the brand considers the video to the most important element of this landing page and wants the focus to be on it. So if you want to attribute a group of text to a similar notion, you will have to use the same font, color, and styling. Similarly, presenting different pieces of information in different styles and forms makes it easier for the brain to process it.
In the realm of design, this principle plays an essential role in creating emphasis and guiding attention. The Law of Contrast states that when two things are completely different, the degree of difference is amplified. It’s about leveraging the power of distinction to highlight and bring focus to specific elements in a design.
If the image looks like a mass of dark and light shapes with no defined edges, then you may have used too much contrast. Another way to check is by photographing your artwork with your phone, then editing the image so that it’s in greyscale. This way you can see the values in your artwork accurately without colour confusing the image. You can see from this whether you need to increase the contrast in some areas, or tone it down.
The famous adverts for the iPod expertly used contrast to focus the viewers attention on the music player. The ads featured a silhouetted character on a brightly colored background. The iPod and earphones appear in white and stand out clearly against the silhouettes and colored backgrounds. Not only is a page more attractive when contrast is used, but the purpose and organization of the document are much clearer. In the magazine spread below, Studio8 have used Contrast, Balance and Proximity laws to produce an unusual, eye-catching page with the contributors bios.
The usage of varying shapes also makes it aesthetic because of the contrast. Now, this does not mean that this applies to blocks of texts alone. For example, if an image is the most important part of your design, the size of the accompanying text must be considerably lesser than that of the image. From our previous blogs on designs and good design vs bad design, we know that design has a purpose in every marketing campaign. The purpose can be to engage the audience, entertain the audience, raise awareness, or serve as a tool for all these in the bigger picture. You know we throw the terms “Good design”, “Bad design”, or just even “design” very lightly.
London design studio Sella Concept used vibrant colours and an assortment of different materials throughout the hotel interior, with the aim of "juxtaposing modernism with a classic theatrical flair". Smooth, red cabinets are set against a blue-green marble back and worktop in this kitchenette, which is located in a studio apartment in the Locke am Platz hotel in Zurich. What you need to do is with this kind of contrast is to use obvious shapes that can be easy to recognize with unusual ones, and let the brain complete the task.
The level of contrast you use in your artwork will depend on the effect you want to create. For example, in this painting of a wave at just before dusk, I wanted to create a serene feeling, whereas the sunset painting on the right appears more vibrant and eye catching at first, due to the high value contrast. Contrast in web and interface design is considered one of the five essential visual design principles. The common ground between these principles is that they represent how design elements work together to form a visual entity that users perceive and interact with. To better understand how to use contrast in your next design project, let’s discuss how it can benefit the user experience of a website or application.
The size and layout contrast on The Atlantic homepage indicates the information hierarchy between the featured and secondary articles. This three-column grid is what’s known as an asymmetric grid, as the columns vary in width. The center, widest column is clearly the most significant, followed by two narrower columns on each side. Each article thumbnail inside the left column is taller than those in the right, another subtle use of contrast which conveys that the shorter thumbnails constitute the least significant column. Background image overlays (as well as solid color or patterned overlays) can facilitate a clear contrast between the background and a heading placed directly in front of it. This technique is widely used for hero sections, as a way to dramatize the hero text or content.
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Remember that you can also play with the size, the shapes and the typography. At the end, it’s a combination of all these elements that will make your graphic design look appealing. For example, in this painting by Anders Zorn, the eye is first naturally drawn to Zorn himself.
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