What do you call a good design? The one which has the brightest colors and stands out in the crowd, or the one which is smart at the appealing and maybe not very much attractive at first? Some could also love a design which is great at its simplicity without much of colors or pictures in it, more like a message than a design.

On the other hand, there are designs which people hate, don’t want to look at it, talks rubbish, makes fun of it or totally ignores it. Be it the design of a website, poster, banner, etc. They just don’t like it for its bad font, jumble of overly bright colors, shapes and drawings resembling to confusing graffiti or for any other reason. They just ignores the thing. And the company which invested its money feels like they wasted their precious money.

Everybody likes it differently. Everybody has different taste. Obviously.

But, every once in a while, we confront a design idea which is loved and adored by everyone. Everybody’s talking about it and the company sees a huge bump in its revenue. For instance, a slow, old fashioned website, when replaced with a fresh, good design, it sees magically improved visitors and everybody adoring it. Or, a new modern logo of a company replenishes the trust of the customers in the company and even brings new customers towards it. That’s the power of a great design.

A great and balanced designed had just heightened the user experience to a lever where the visitor starts to trust the website or anything for which the design is made for.

A great design could make a big difference. But, before knowing what a great design is made of, let’s what any design, at its basic, made of.

A Design Is Made Of

1. Colors
2. Shapes/lines
3. Images
4. Fonts

Not every single element listed above is necessarily included in every design idea for a banner or a flyer, but every design is various combination of those elements. Some elegant designs could emphasis more on words and fonts than the colors and images, while most others would try to grab attention through attractive colors at first and then convey its message through the words. It all depends on the designer.

Designs are related to art and as art being subjective thing, couldn’t have a formula, so we can’t give you a formula of a great design. But, we can, based on our experience, tell you that great designs, in today’s times, share some similar traits which are rare to find in failed designs. Here they are:

Features of a Great Design

Attractiveness

A good design is attractive. The user or the viewer is automatically directed towards an attractive design. Maybe the design consists bright colors or could be of minimal colors in the pool of bright-colored billboards. Or it could have elements which forces the user to pay attention to it. Like this:

But, some even uses the essential weakness of the human mind for the attraction and then simply telling their original message later on,

Whether it is a banner on a website, first of all the design should attract the viewer’s attention towards itself. If the design is pale and ignorable, it fails right at there.

A Great Experience

After being attractive, the second necessity for a good design that it delivers a good experience to the viewer. Sometimes, attractive designs could be very annoying to view and the viewers ceases to look at it anymore. If it is on his/her commute, he/she will start to ignore or neglect it. If it’s on webpage the same ignoring will continue. Also, not only colors but the use of grotesque, unlikable or taboo images could also bring some sort of disgust in viewer’s mind. Yet another way to ruin a design is to stuff many things into that little space, which leaves nothing to focus on for the viewer and makes the user literally run off from it.

Here is an example for a website with great user experience.

Design should deliver a nice, soothing experience to the eye and the mind, which will encourage the viewer’s curiosity for the message. If it’s annoying and bad, the viewer isn’t going to glance at it the second time and the whole agenda fails on this second step.

Comprises Psychological/Scientific advantages

Now that we know the psychological effects of colors and certain layouts or representations of the things, a good designer should also try to include them in their design ideas.

For instance, color red captures the attention most powerfully being a very visible color than others. Also, it is said to increase enthusiasm, energy and confidence in the viewer. Color red also has significances in many cultures being an auspicious color. Due to such believed traits of the color it is mostly used in marketing ideas, companies with similar agendas and 77% of the world’s flags comprises the color red. It all because of those attributes. Famous examples, Coca Cola, Disney, KFC, etc.

Blue is called as a safe color, predictable, calm and orderly. Due to such attributes, many multinational companies use the color blue in their marketing campaigns, logos or on websites to increase the trust among the viewers, and to inspired integrity and honesty in the workers. Blue is also said to be a color which forces people to stay at a place for a longer time, thus, many malls have blue as their theme color. Famous examples, Nokia, Samsung, Unicef, etc.

Yellow represents happiness, warmth and in some regions it represents courage. Thus, it is mostly used by companies which in children’s products, leisure products, food industry or entertainment industry. Famous examples, McDonald’s, Subway, Lay’s, etc.

Also, it is proved that the more graphical the representation is the more quickly and far more interestingly the message is conveyed. Thus, a good designer should also try to convey the message in maximum graphical manner in most cases or at least capture and divert the viewer’s attentions towards the words through graphics.

Apart from the colors, other techniques to impact the viewer psychologically is called Emotional Branding in which the marketing efforts are intended to affect directly to the consumer’s emotional state. Such as this,

The psychological traits aren’t necessity in most cases of the design, but as have scientific proof, your design could be much more appealing at the subconscious level using them.

Long Lasting Impact/Appeal

Do you still remember the The Dark Knight Poster with burning logo on the building behind the Batman? Most probably the answer is yes. Why? Because, they are the best examples of generating long-lasting impact on viewers’ minds.

From the appropriate color theme to the placement of the central figure and the burning mark on the building and also an unforgettable logo of the Batman, all these things are brought very beautifully at one place to create a deep and long lasting impression on the viewer. That’s why, you won’t forget them so easily either.

But, that’s a movie with popular character. You can find websites, advertisements, banners and other forms of media with long lasting appeal. The goal is to make you remember about the product or the company, so when the next time you require the similar product, the first thing which comes in your mind is that product.

On website design, an appealing design increases the number of visitors and re-visitors of the site with increased minutes of stay on the site. It heightens the chances of more buyers radically. That’s what an appealing and long-lastingly impactful design is able to do.

Conveys The Message Effortlessly

Graphical designs are used in creating websites, banners, infographics, etc. All of these various information careers have one thing in common – a message. They are trying to convey a message through their attractiveness, smartness, great experience or through any other trait. Even if a design comprises all the other attributes for it to win a designing award, but fails to convey the message for which it is designed, the whole design is considered failed. The company which invests their money for an attractive design aren’t aiming for winning an award. They want their message to be carried and conveyed successfully. That’s all. If that’s achieved in any legal way, your design, with any style or traits, is doubtlessly good. More like this,

Achieves The Aims

That’s movie with huge budget. Let’s talk about more commonplace things which involves design ideas. Have you have saw a billboard which has forced you to stop on your commute and go through the whole advertisement just because you liked the presentation or you enjoyed reading it or it had attractive image of a happy person eating a whole burger in one bite and asking you to try the same for its delicious taste and you almost felt hungry and mouth becoming watery. And if the food shop is right on your way, you enter into it to try out that burger without a second thought. That’s the aim achieved.

An Example

 

The above picture is a very fine example of attractiveness. Imagine the poster on a large billboard or outside a theatre. First it attracts our attention towards it with the very bright color theme, which is visible and attractive from a very far distance. Second the elements it comprises are highly captivating. We have seen the Eiffel Tower in images for a thousand times, but here, it is a represented in a totally new perspective. Second elements are the lines of skulls. Those are psychological captivators, kind of inspiring intrigue, mystery and indicating the nature of the subject.

It comprises all of the listed elements. It is attractive due to its bright red color and will stand out the most in any cluster of billboards or on website. The viewers’ eyes are automatically drawn towards it before looking at any other thing.

It also delivers good, intended experience. Being horror movie, the use of skulls and upside-down Eiffel Tower, an unusual sight for us combined with red color more resembling to blood delivers the experience of something ominous, bad and terrible, which is exactly what the movie is all about.

The scientific and psychological element is the use of blood-red color in not so auspicious way, when represented with human skull. It more reminds us of dead bodies, hospitals and similarly themed incidents. Moviegoers with such interests will find the poster utterly attractive and satisfyingly likeable.

About the long-lasting impact and appeal, I am sure you are not going to forget this poster so easily. Also, it conveys the message of being a scary horror movie about the undergrounds of Paris where ominous things (=human skulls) and secrets are hidden. No necessary of using words to tell the whole concept.

Movie was made for 5 million dollars and earned around 40 millions in its total run. That’s the aim achieved. Not saying that it earned that much amount only because of the poster. Other marketing channels of trailers, merchandises, online marketing, story-line, quality of the movie, also impacts the earning hugely. But, here for its impressive, long-lasting and unique design, no one can deny that this poster also helped to catch the moviegoers’ attention largely.

Conclusion

Again not all of these are necessarily required in a design which just works and achieves the aims. All designs are aimed for the last option. If that’s achieved even by a single dot on a blank paper, that will be considered a great design for the subject.