Training Monday: 8 Basic Elements of Design

8 Basic Elements of Design

In Design school, graphic and web designers often learn about the formal principles and elements of design. These concepts can and should be used as guides in making important aesthetic decisions that can help youcrate mor unique designs. So what are the elements of design? How many elements of design do we need to learn?

The main difference between principles and elements is that principles are like the rules you should follow while elements are the things that will help you follow those rules for the best outcome. How many elements of design do we need to learn? There is some debate over how any elements there actually are. Depending on who you talk to, some six, some say ten,.. So for out purposes with regard to designing for the web, we are going to say that there are eight elements of design and they are in no particular order:

Texture
Value
Color
Shape
Space
Type
Form
Line

Notice: if you’re like me, and you have trouble remembering huge lists, you might want to use an pneumonic device, that you can easily reorder these words in any way that makes sense to you to make up an easy to remember sentence like this one that I made up: