Theoretical Framework

Principles of Visual Design

Balance

Balance is “an even and aesthetically pleasing distribution of elements” (Lohr, 2008, p. 158).

Unity

While using various kinds of elements make visual design interesting, excessive use of them mess up visual design, and thus, controlling variety or achieving unity is important (Evans & Thomas, 2013).

Proximity

“Proximity is the position and space given to the placement of elements in a composition” (Evans & Thomas, 2013, p. 15).

Contrast

“Whereas variety describes small differences within a design, contrast describes larger differences in the elements of a design” (Gatto, Porter, & Selleck, 2011, p. 168).

Emphasis

Related concept to contrast is emphasis. Emphasis makes certain object stand out and thus attract more attention (Evans & Thomas, 2013).

Alignment

Placing elements along common imaginary line is called alignment (Lidwell, Holden & Butler, 2003).

Culture

Culture is a very important factor that shapes our perception (Bruner, 1990; Hedberg & Brown, 2002). Norman (1988) emphasizes the importance of considering culture when people design products.

Multimedia Principle

“People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone” (Mayer, 2009, p. 223).

Coherence Principle

Avoiding “interesting but irrelevant” and “unneeded” things (Mayer, 2009, p. 89).

Motivation Principles

There is also a series of visual design principles that help to achieve optimal level of motivation (Keller & Burkman, 1993). While Rieber (1994) acknowledge the possibility of appealing graphics to enhance motivation, like Mayer, he also points out their possibility of distracting learners’ attention from elements important for learning.

Visual Design Decision

To sum, there are several principles of visual design that could guide designers to create effective instructional materials. However, these principles just provide brief guideline and do not provide answers to specific design needs. Indeed, “design is not a collection of formulas that, if followed and applied, ensure effective results” and it is “a fluid process that is guided by the designer’s sense of intuition, reason, and aesthetic judgment” (Evans & Thomas, 2013, p. 4). Observing and analyzing actual visual design process could bring new knowledge to the field and would help designers to make optimal design judgment along with existing studies and principles of visual design.

Elements of Visual Design

In order to help description and analysis of visual design process, it would be useful to identify elements of visual design. The elements of visual designs are ingredients designers can use (Gatto, Porter, & Selleck, 2011). Evans and Thomas (2013) identify line, texture, shape, space, and type as tangible elements, and size, color, value, and volume as conditional elements (Evans & Thomas, 2013, p. 18). The elements identified by Gatto, Porter and Selleck (2011) are line, color, shape, form, value, space, and texture. Such elements will be defined and explained in the following section.

References

• Brown, A., & Green, T. D. (2011). The essentials of instructional design: Connecting fundamental principles with process and practice (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Prentice Hall.
• Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Evans, P., & Thomas, M. (2013). Exploring the elements of design (3rd ed.). Delmar, NY: Cengage Learning.
• Gatto, J. A., Porter, A. W., & Selleck, J. (2011). Exploring visual design: The elements and principles (4th ed.). Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.
• Hedberg, J. G., & Brown, I. (2002). Understanding cross-cultural meaning through visual media. Educational Media International, 39(1), 23–30. doi:10.1080/09523980210131123
• Keller, J. M., & Burkman, E. (1993). Motivation principles. In M. L. Fleming & W. H. Levie (Eds.), Instructional message design: Principles from the behavioral and cognitive sciences (2nd ed., pp. 3–53). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
• Lidwell, W., Holden, K., & Butler, J. (2003). Universal principles of design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport.
• Lohr, L. L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
• Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia Learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Rieber, L. P. (1994). Computers, graphics & learning. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.