8 basic rules: The ABC of graphic design

It would be very complicated and quite absurd to try to establish the magic formula for success in the world of design, since it is an area that is not 100% empirical. Although you have a high percentage of technical knowledge, each job, design and proposal are relative. But what is certain is that some general rules that all graphic works should follow, especially paying attention to the intelligibility of the message we are creating.

We could say that these rules can be classified into eight ideas or elementary rules:

• Conventionality: It is very important that the graphic codes we use are culturally valid. Developing "new graphic languages" especially if we are starting, is absurd if it is not understood. We must not forget that our first objective is to make ourselves understood and convey our message effectively.

• Originality: It is a basic element and it will help us a lot to compensate for the conventionality we talked about before in order to give the message more relevance and expressiveness. But as we said at the beginning, this variable will depend a lot in relation to the project we are facing. The doses of originality (or creativity) and conventionality will be different depending on our style, our method and the message that we are developing.

• Effectiveness: One of the basic and essential rules is that our design, at a minimum, must be effective for all the functions for which it has been designed and developed. Aesthetics can never take precedence over functionality, on the contrary, it should enhance the communicative exercise.

• Property: The graphics must conform to the identity and needs of the client who makes the order; It does not consist of talking about the issuer but in speaking as he would do it and in the first person, using our talents as designers.

• Respect: The most essential form of respect is communication and readability. As with the transmitter, the graph must be adjusted and respect the receiver codes. It is spoken for him, so that he understands, in case he does not understand us we will have failed miserably.

• Density: Between the empty and the full there must be a relationship of meaning. Our message must be devoid of areas deprived of meaning (which does not mean that there should not be empty areas, a vacuum is necessary for our structure to breathe and flow). If eliminating an element does not lose anything significant, it is because that element was left over from the beginning. When in doubt, delete it.

• Economy: Waste is communicationally negative. It should not contain superfluous redundancies or graphic excesses, we must pay as much or even more attention to the empty areas of our proposal. Often times the void is what gives meaning to global work.

• Endurance: Advertising communication must be autonomous, free of references to its production process or its author. It belongs to the issuer and its production must become invisible. Design is a service, it works and designs in order to satisfy the demands of clients and the groups for which the work is intended.