What is Design Aesthetics? A Guide for Graphic Design Students

Hi there everybody! We hope that you all are having a great time reading our blogs and that our free freebies and design templates are helping you working on your favorite projects as well. Our today’s blog is going to be all about design aesthetics so if you are someone who is already a graphic designer or if you are planning on learning a thing or two about graphic designing for personal/commercial purposes, then keep reading this blog as we have worked on this guide for you guys, and we can bet that you will find it super useful for yourselves.

First things first; let’s talk about what is meant by aesthetics when we combine it with design and why is it so important that any and every graphic designer in the world has to make sure that their designs have that aesthetic sense to attract the audiences.

Stand apart from the crowd

Also, one more thing that we must mention here is that designs can only grab a person’s attention if they are standing apart from the crowd. If you are producing something basic or something that five other brands are also doing, then you won’t get the recognition, appreciation, and attraction that you are expecting to get.

Put yourself in the client’s shoes

When we say design aesthetics, we mean to point out the core elements of a design the is directly connected to its pleasing qualities. If you are wondering about the why’s here, then we would like to tell you guys that if the design is not pleasing any senses; it will be discarded in a matter of seconds. It has to be powerful enough to make them stop and look at what you have designed. If you are a business, then one of your goals would be to attract the audiences in a way that they not only engage with you, but they also invest their money in your business as well.

Visual weight and color balance

In a visual context; aesthetics has many factors that determine if the designs are pleasing or not. For example, it includes color, balance, movement, shape, visual weight, pattern etc. With all of these in harmony, you can influence how a person thinks and feels (regarding the design). Like we have said this above as well; you need to put something aesthetically pleasing on the table to attract your audience towards your product / business. It is also very important to know that you do not have to focus on just making a good first impression – it has to be thought about in the longer run as well; your bond must be made stronger with the passage of time through your design aesthetics.

Beauty rests in proportion

Plato (Greek Philosopher) was of the viewpoint that beauty rests in proportion, harmony and unity and it has been proved time and again that, that is true. Take one of these out of the equation and you will see that there is chaos – the design won’t appeal to you and if it does not appeal to you, you must never put it out there for anyone to look at or to interact with you or the design in anyway whatsoever.

Growing is good but evolving is better

In the present age and time; every business is trying to be on the top and the fact that every platform allows us to spend money on whatever we post on our digital and social media platforms, you will see that the competition is only becoming tougher. Since the algorithms have their own ways to work; it is not possible to beat the competitor on the basis of being basic. You must be different to attract the persons you want to interact with your business. Grow, evolve and keep getting better.

To help you get there through your designs, we will share how you can create that pull by creating attractiveness bias!

No matter what, audiences always react to emotional content – no, not the sob stories (anymore), but the content that is goosebumpy. Try putting in the element of emotions and the rest will happen on its own.
Then there is an option to create content that is functional; when it takes you from one thing to another, where the audience decide what happens next. It could be anything but make sure that it is good.
Another important thing that attracts is the usability – if the content is easy on the eyes, easy to consume and can be used well too. If it is too pretty but the usability is nothing, it won’t sell.
Context matters – there is absolutely nothing in the world where the context does not matter. If there is no context in your product / business or even in you design, create one and you will see it becoming successful in no time.

That’s all for today! We hope that you guys were able to gather a bunch of pointers that you can keep in mind before you start working on any design project from now on. Oh, and don’t forget to share your feedback with us!

Images credit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5