Graphics

Graphic Poster

In a few minutes I'll teach you how to make funky images like this:

People ask me what software I use, so I'll tell you: it doesn't matter. There are countless free programs* that can draw rectangles and text. It's like asking what typewriter an author uses - really, you want to learn how to write.

So in this post I'm going to teach you quickly about palette, type and layout to make designs that look good in minutes. Knowing a few principles can help you present, decorate and even dress better. Just don't blame me if everyone suddenly wants to have sex with you.

1. PALETTE

You want to start thinking of colours using a system known as HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) - this will help you understand how colours work together. 

Hue is the colour - e.g. red, blue, purple. Hues go in a circle through all the colours of the rainbow. 

Saturation is how colourful the colour is. Saturated colours are rich and sometimes sickly. De-saturated colours are more subtle and subdued. If you remove all saturation from a colour, you end up with a pure grey.

Value is how bright the colour is, ranging from pure black to white, with shades in between. 

Why do you care? Because almost all the 'rules' of good colour can be expressed easily in terms of hue, saturation and value. For example:


Adjacent hues complement each other well. Think colours in the rainbow that are next to each other:

Distant hues - when drawn on top of each other - usually look horrific:

Unless they're chosen carefully, with a balance of value and saturation. One trick is to make one colour much darker. Then they can be quite striking:

Restrain your palette. A couple of hues is good:

Lots of hues is very bad:

You can always add monochrome to anything i.e. black, white and greys (this is why they say black goes with everything - it does):

And so on. Start looking around you at anything that has been designed, and you'll start to see common patterns: I virtually guarantee you'll find a design which combines one hue + monochrome within 30 seconds. There's a reason for that: it works.

2. TYPE

You need to pick and set fonts well. Let's cover some simple rules:

Be picky with fonts. Not all fonts are created equal. Compare:

The best fonts tend to cost money. There's a reason for that. However, even with no budget you can do an awful lot with Helvetica or even - ulp - Arial (don't tell any designers I said that). Most of my Quora posts use Helvetica Neue.

Don't mix more than 1-2 different fonts. You can add variety with different weights (e.g. bold, light) of the same font, like this:

Mix too many fonts or sizes and you end up with a ransom note:

Experiment with spacing between letters and lines (tracking and line height). The exact same font can be made to look very different:

3. COMPOSITION

There's an art to arranging things. Let's cover two simple rules.

Defy expectations. People instinctively expect text to be left aligned at the top, or centred in the middle. Text is usually straight, and usually fits the available space. Defy such expectations to make designs interesting:

Here's another:  

Use empty space. The purple design above defies your expectation of centred text, but it also makes strong use of empty space. The huge block of colour dominates the image and makes the off-centre text stand out much more.  

Here, spacing out the letters and putting them in the middle of a vast rectangle makes them more dramatic (and quite Batman, don't you think?):

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Copy copy copy
  The best way to get good is to copy others. Don't feel bad about this: it's one of the best ways to learn, and you'll soon realise that imitation is a skill in itself. You'll find inspiration on everything from a magazine stand to a shampoo bottle. 
  
• Stop using crazy effects
  Most software makes it easy to add drop shadows, textures with bevels and rainbow colour gradients. But if you stop and look around, virtually no good designs are built on those things. Overuse of such tricks is usually a sign of an amateur; like a writer who just learned about the semicolon and feels compelled to use it; everywhere.
  
• Learn the rules and break 'em
  Almost everything I've said here can be defied with an astute example. It's like playing a note off-key - in the hands of a skilled musician, it can make a piece great. But learn how to play it straight first.
  

And finally, for your health:

Ahem.

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A footnote on software

I haven't used all of these personally, but any of the following programs should be capable of creating what you see here:

• GIMP (free)
• Inkscape (free)
• Photoshop (I use a lot, and recommend)
• Illustrator (I use, and recommend)
• Xara X (what I used for all the images here, but is a bit obscure)

I sometimes use a graphics tablet to paint, but all of the images here were made with a mouse.

Source:http://www.quora.com/Graphic-Design/How-does-Oliver-Emberton-create-the-graphics-for-his-Quora-posts/answer/Oliver-Emberton