4 Simple Tips to Design with Contrast and Type

effectively communicating an idea through design is all about controlling the viewer's eye and guiding them around the design well let me show you how to use the design principle contrast to take your typography to the next level [Music] hello there i'm michael frederick and in this quick video i'm going to show you how i use contrast to communicate my ideas more effectively to an audience just like you so today we're going to cover four different areas where contrast can really make a big difference in your type designs the first thing we'll cover is contrast with size and scale and in my humble opinion this is by far the best technique to create dynamic type layouts the second thing we'll look at is contrast with weight is your type heavy or is it thin and the third contrast with spacing now that's things like letter spacing sometimes called tracking and line spacing which is leading we'll also talk briefly about contrast with value that's the brightness of the darkness of like a word or an object you can download the project files i'm using in this video to follow along with or practice this after you're done watching details are in the description [Music] in the world of design contrast simply means that one element in your design is different from another now this is my humble opinion but i feel that contrast is probably the most important design principle because it helps us organize our designs and it establishes hierarchy of important elements contrast also makes our designs look really dynamic and can really help to add that visual interest to our work and you know something that's a real big deal contrast also helps to show the viewer what's important in our designs by creating emphasis and as you know emphasis is that thing that gives our designs meaning and impact but the most important reason we use contrast is because we need to control the viewer's eyes that's right remember we are visual communicators that's who we are we control where people look and to better illustrate how we use contrast to control our eyes take a look at these words right here premiering this week big movie it's kind of plain looking i mean there's really nothing great about this it kind of looks boring so to make this statement have more impact and look more dynamic let's just see what happens if we add contrast with type size first bam look at how i just controlled your eye now i bet you're looking at big movie first right it's large it's dominant it's the most important thing on the screen and you know something i want you to look at it so i made it bigger i added contrast with type size and this one technique is probably the most effective way to make type feel more dynamic and important just make one thing bigger in your design it's sometimes really that simple now let's add some contrast with visual weight bam look at that big movie is now heavy and thick it has lots of weight and it really attracts your eye right so right now i am forcing you to look at big movie first because it takes up more visual space in the frame it's bold you're going to look at it and sometimes we also use contrast with value to help control our eyes now value is the brightness or the darkness of an object so let's go ahead and add some value ah there we go right see how the word movie is now brighter and this really now pops off the frame it's brighter your eye tends to see those brighter objects first and that's value working for you so by simply using the design principle of contrast you can effectively communicate a visual message to the viewer and make your designs look more dynamic and exciting so are you ready cool let's design with contrast [Music] okay now open up that provided file and let's jump into photoshop in today's lesson i want to use contrast with type to make this design right here look and feel so much more dynamic so let's do this together it's me and you this is gonna be fun our make believe client today is nebula films and they are using this piece of key art right here to promote their new photo division called binary images they'd like to see this title information right here binary images a division of nebula films they'd like to see this designed in a way where binary images is the most dominant and important part of the title design and they want that part of the title to be the hero in a division of nebula films will need to be secondary visual information so it's not going to be as important so this is really all good stuff to know why well because now i know what needs to be emphasized in my type design i know what needs to have the most contrast in size and in visual weight but the problem is is that i really don't like anything about this type layout i mean this really looks horrible and i'm not really digging that uh typeface at all either it feels uh wrong so i'll be changing that in a few minutes so let me first duplicate this type folder and go get my type tool and i just want to move stuff around real quick so i'll go ahead and break up the title and separate these word groupings based on sort of the hierarchy and the emphasis of the type design and the message all right i think this is going to look awesome fingers are crossed all right the placement of this type feels kind of weird right i mean this photo is really symmetrical so i think the type will look best aligned somewhere here in the center let me get that right all right this is how the viewer needs to see this information so binary images is on the top and larger because it's important a division of nebula films is secondary so it's not going to be as dominant it's going to be smaller so right now i'm going to use contrast with size to really force you to look at binary images because it's important [Music] when i'm designing with type i always like to imagine my type as rectangle or square shape so i can quickly see the overall proportion of the layout and how everything kind of fits together because you know designs it's it's all about balance and what feels right to your eye based on all the positive and negative space relationships right so i really want to see how this all feels grouped together that's why i'm making these big shapes now let me turn on my template guide by hitting command semicolon because this photo design is symmetrical in its composition i'm going to position this type block in the center between the dude standing on the car and that blue comet at the top and i just want to make sure the type has enough breathing room and it's not jammed into that space between those other elements in the photo now it's always important to me to feel the harmony between the positive and the negative space in any design right and when you work with type think of the type as just another group of shapes to balance in your overall design okay it's just another piece of like a larger puzzle so my second decision to make is to decide what classification of type style do i want to use for this title now based on this kind of product i'm kind of thinking a modern uh clean sans serif typeface will work really well all right let me i'll select sans serif as the filter in my type character panel to narrow my choices and i want to pick a sans serif that has a large typeface family because i'm only going to use one typeface for this project so a family with lots of weights and properties will really give me a lot of options to choose from and that's important when you're using one typeface so let's see here uh and i like the look of this typeface right here now druk is one of my go-to typefaces in my toolkit it's versatile it's got lots of contrasting weight styles it's got like medium to super duper heavy and it has lots of variations and the cool thing about type styles with variations in the type family it will allow me to create greater contrast with size and weight and that's a good thing especially when you're only using one typeface in a design plus as a bonus our eyes do really like seeing those dynamic differences and changes in the visual weight so i'm going to be using contrast with type size and weight in this design to not only establish like the hierarchy of this message but to also control where you look first i'm really liking this non-condensed face of druk it feels clean and very bold and i want to make a bold statement here and i really do like this heavyweight font for binary images and the thinner medium weight for a division of nebula films now when you use type a good rule to follow is to skip a few of the weights to create that greater contrast between type elements i think that's a solid rule and i really want to make sure in this case that the viewer can see binary images first so i'll make it really really heavy in weight and i want to push that contrast so remember when you're picking your typeface just try to select one with lots of weights so you have those options to make contrast all right i think that's looking pretty good now should binary images be on one line or is it stacked in this area hmm decisions decisions always so i'm thinking stacked because it could be a better fit in this vertical layout also you know something binary in images they both have six characters and that could be kind of cool to see these on two lines six over six so let me break up binary images into two layers so i can have more control over this layout okay also i like that the two words stack create this tight sort of square shape that will attract your eye in the center layout always trying to control where you're looking [Music] all right let me mess with the kerning between the characters so i'm going to select metric which is the font built-in kerning information in the type panel here and manually kern the characters that really need it so i'm pressing the option plus right or left arrows to adjust the kerning between characters and i want these words to fit tight into the space so i'm reducing the space between the letter forms right now now kerning is not so much about equal spacing between these letter forms it's more about like how the overall letters sort of fit together as a group so if the word looks strange to your eye then the kerning is probably off between specific letter combinations so just trust your eye because it never lies ooh deep all right the kerning is looking okay all right so now i need to line up the y and the s on the right now this is this is tricky business that piece of the y that's kind of hanging out to the right sort of throws your eye off the vertical line that sort of connects the y to the s underneath it do you see that i think i'll make a rectangle and try to see the alignment better with that straight line of a rectangle so these are the issues when you're working with type you get these wonky sorts of form connections that can really look strange so you've got to look closely all the time at the negative space created by these certain alignments of the type so just make sure things look right to your eye okay that's looking tight all right now i want to give some space between the words and that's letting and i'm not only paying attention to the space between the words but i'm also looking at the space between the characters you know i want to make sure that the space between the words and the characters all feel balanced so if i measure this space right here with a rectangle then i can use this measurement to create the leading space and i'm doing this because common space measurements within a type sort of lock up they can be used to create visual unity because your eye likes to see these very common spaces sort of put together so that's very important to keep that in mind when you're working with type again these negative spaces right and which are the holes between the letter forms they need to fit together as kind of one unit your eye needs to flow through those spaces all right now i need to deal with the secondary info right here hmm i think i'll make it really small to show contrast between binary images and track out the type to open up the space between the characters i'm tracking this out because this open tracking and smaller type size will really help you know to push the difference in contrast between this secondary information and binary images so everything i'm doing i'm messing with the contrast and spacing the contrast and size and the contrast and weight just to create contrast between what i want you to look at and what i don't want you to look at or what is secondary now i'm going to align this line of type a division of nebula films with the i and the s of images and this will make it a tight lockup okay this is shaping up it's looking very dynamic now so much better [Music] the only thing i don't really like right now is the color of the type now that white type is very harsh it looks really nasty can't let that be there all right i think what i'll do is i want to make this type feel like it belongs in the design right i want it to feel like it's part of this overall image so i'll select the color picker and pick one of those bright colors from the sky's horizon maybe tweak it a bit brighter too i mean i really want binary and images to pop off this dark blue background the contrast and value between the background and the words binary and images needs to be extreme right so i want to make them brighter so you see it first that's value now the secondary words i'm thinking i'll select a like a medium light color in this area right here let's apply this color okay so these words will be less bright so they fall back a bit more right into the background i really want to make sure you focus on the hero words first value is helping me create that sort of visual hierarchy in my design all right let's take a look at this thing not the greatest thing ever but um it's not the worst it's okay feels pretty good to my eye now let's take a look back at the type that the client gave me and let's compare let's compare it with this new revised dynamic type layout let's see if there's a big difference wow right that's a big difference i think the new layout is more dynamic and exciting now i know where to look and i can definitely see that binary images is the main focus of my type design okay i'm going to put a fork in this design and hopefully my client will like it very nice but don't leave yet okay there's more [Music] before you go i just want to show you a few more examples of this same image but with different type layouts because contrast with type can be achieved in a lot of different ways so in the second design you can see how two contrasting typefaces can also create a really dynamic look right a basic rule of thumb is to choose a heavy sarah face and contrast that with a very thin sans serif but make sure you choose two different contrasting styles so they can stand apart from one another and in the third design i'm using contrast with type size and letter spacing to create that open feel in this type layout and also notice how laying out the words on one line creates a completely different look and the last type design is again using contrast with weight and size to really draw your eye to the words binary images all right this has been fun and i hope that you've learned a few new things so thanks for hanging in there with me i know it's a lot to absorb so if you want to improve your type designs remember to use the design principle contrast to help you make your designs look and feel more dynamic okay that's it pretty simple huh hit subscribe if you want more tips like this one now if you want to learn more about using the design principle of contrast and how to design using typography check out design kickstart and design boot camp from school of motion hey thanks for watching and i hope to see you in class you

Channel: School of Motion

Views: 12,816

Keywords: Motion Design, Motion Graphics, After Effects, Tutorial, Tips, Tricks, Technique, Learn, Basics, Design, MoGraph

Id: OD5zHCB8Sog

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020