Aw, C.R.A.P

An ironic acronym to describe four main principles for design. Contrast. Repetition. Alignment. And of course, Proximity.

Need a little more clarity as to what I'm talking about?

Check this out:

Which one is this, you ask?

Yep, you guessed it. CONTRAST. Nothing contrasts more than black and white. I love the equal usage of black and white on both the upper and lower parts of the poster. It's classic. Anything looks good in these two shades.

Next:

This one is really interesting. I love it! For one thing, it embodies the CONTRAST principle as well as this other principle I have in mind. Just take note of the harsh black and popping green placed with each other. Now, the other principle I had in mind was REPETITION. We see this from the use of the little bird silhouette, the fonts and the use of the same colors. Keeping things consistent like this makes for a great flyer.

Alrighty. Let's open up door number three!

This poster best represents ALIGNMENT. The text in this picture is in the upper left corner, and the rest of the space that's creating shape around the text are all eye catching horizontal colored rectangles. It's pretty. It's different.

Lastly.

This one is showcases PROXIMITY. By this, I mean, items on the project that are grouped together. Here, you can see that the majority of the text is organized onto the left side of this poster. The drawings are situated mainly on the middle and center of the poster.

Technically, all these posters represent more than one of each principle in the C.R.A.P. design principles. I think that's what makes for a really nice piece.

I think these principles are great for a guideline as to what is considered to look esthetically pleasing. I don't believe there are really any shortcomings to having such a guide. I mean, we could look at it like anything that didn't embody one of these key elements, would be considered ugly. That's not true. "Ugly" and "Beautiful" is a way of perceiving things that has been coined by society. They set the standard of what that looks like. So very easily, we can reset that standard. All of a sudden, something that doesn't fit under the C.R.A.P. mould, could be considered incredible in terms of design.

Some really good things to think about and be inspired by when it comes to creating my poster. Word.

I've spoken my piece.

Peace.