Visual Design Principles

"Any product (from software products such as websites and apps to hardware products such as toasters and hairdryers) can be broken down into fundamental elements of visual design."

These visual elements:

Line
Shape
Value
Volume
Color
Texture
Typography

contribute to these main visual-design principles:

Scale
Visual hierarchy
Balance:
- Symmetrical: elements are symmetrically distributed relative to the central imaginary axis
- Asymmetrical: elements are asymmetrically distributed relative to the central axis
- Radial: elements radiate out from a central, common point in a circular direction.
Contrast
- Dominance
Gestalt: Gestalt principles explain how humans simplify and organize complex images that consist of many elements, by subconsciously arranging the parts into an organized system that creates a whole, rather than interpreting them as a series of disparate elements. Proximity is probably one of the most important Gestalt principles and is especially important for UX. It refers to the fact that items that are visually closer together are perceived as part of the same “group”. Also proximity, together with other features, can enforce "unity" the global sense of all elements being "a single thing".