4.4 Graphic Design

• What is Graphic Design?

  -Graphic design is a craft where professionals create visual content to communicate messages. By applying visual hierarchy and page layout techniques, designers use typography and pictures to meet users’ specific needs and focus on the logic of displaying elements in interactive designs, to optimize the user experience.
• Graphic Design is about Molding the User Experience Visually
• Graphic design is an ancient craft, dating back past Egyptian hieroglyphs. Graphic designers attract viewers using images, color and typography. However, graphic designers working in user experience (UX) design must justify stylistic choices regarding, say, image locations and font with a human-centered approach. That means you need to focus on—and seek to empathize the most with—your specific users while you create good-looking designs that maximize usability. Aesthetics must serve a purpose—in UX design we don’t create art for art’s sake. So, graphic designers must branch into visual design.
• When designing for UX, you should:

  -Consider the information architecture of your interactive designs, to ensure accessibility for users.
• When designing for UX, you should:

  -Leverage graphic design skills to create work that considers the entire user experience, including users’ visual processing abilities.
• “Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.” — John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of Design
• Although to work in the digital age means you must design with interactive software, graphic design still revolves around age-old principles
• It's crucial that you strike the right chord with users from their first glance—hence graphic design's correspondence with emotional design
• As a graphic designer

  You should have a firm understanding of color theory and how vital the right choice of color scheme is
• Color choices


  Must reflect not only the organization (e.g., blue suits banking) but also users' expectations (e.g., red for alerts; green for notifications to proceed)
• You should design with an eye for how elements match the tone


  (e.g., sans-serif fonts for excitement or happiness)
• With user psychology in mind, it’s important to stay focused on some especially weighty graphic design considerations, namely these:

  • Symmetry and Balance (including symmetry types)

  • Flow

  • Repetition

  • Pattern

  • The Golden Ratio (i.e., proportions of 1:1.618)

  • The Rule of Thirds (i.e., how users’ eyes recognize good layout)

  • Typography (encompassing everything from font choice to heading weight)

  • Audience Culture (regarding color use—e.g., red as an alert or, in some Eastern cultures, a signal of good fortune—and reading pattern: e.g., left to right in Western cultures)
• You also need to design for the overall effect, and note how you shape users' emotions as you guide them from, for instance, a landing page to a call to action
• Often, graphic designers are involved in motion design for smaller screens
• They will carefully monitor how their works' aesthetics match their users' expectations
• They can enhance their designs' usability in a flowing, seamless experience by anticipating the users' needs and mindsets
• Typography plays a crucial role in graphic design. The same font can convey very different meanings
• Graphic design mission in UX and UI design

  Display information harmoniously
• Graphic design in UX and UI

  • Beauty and usability go hand in hand
  • Design can discreetly carry organization's ideals to users
• When you establish a trustworthy visual presence

  You hint to users that you know what they want to do
• Arranging aesthetically pleasing elements where users expect to find them


  Helps users intuit their way around
• The values which your designs display


  Mirror users' values
• Visual content will quickly decide your design's fate
• Do not overlook the slightest trigger that may put users off
• What is User Experience and User Experience Design?

  -The user experience (UX) is what a user of a particular product experiences when using that product. A UX designer’s job is thus to create a product that provides the best possible user experience.
• What is User Experience and User Experience Design?

  -Well, it starts with a lot of research. You can’t create anything of value to a user unless you understand what kind of problems they want to solve and how you can solve those problems, so that the user will want or better still, need your solution. You can only get that understanding by interacting with users.
• What is User Experience and User Experience Design?

  • The look of a product is all about creating a product that has visual appeal and which, in particular, harmonizes with a user’s values and captures the spirit of what they expect in that product. In other words, it has to not only look nice, but look right too. In doing so, it establishes a bond of trust and credibility between the product and the user.
• What is User Experience and User Experience Design?

  • Next is the feel, which is really about developing products that are “a joy to use”. That is, whether you’re interacting with them or reacting to them, products should provide a pleasurable experience and not just a functional one.
• What is User Experience and User Experience Design?

  • Lastly, usability is the cornerstone of user experience. If a product isn’t usable, the experience of using it can never be good. UX designers want to create products which can, ideally, be tailored to meet a user’s specific needs, but which provides functionality that is predictable.
• Graphic design


  Emotional communication through typography, color and images
• Serif fonts and dark, duller colors

  • Evoke seriousness
• Sans-serif fonts and bright colors

  • Tend to bring out a sense of joy or excitement
• Graphic designers


  • Emotional designers who elicit specific reactions in a user
• Creative thinking

  • Graphic designers and UX designers are both equally skilled at creative thinking. For graphic designers, creating visuals that adhere to conventions (and thus communicate effectively) while retaining a sense of originality (to stand out among the competition) requires some serious creative and critical thinking.
• UX design


  Concerned with shaping the emotions of the user, although it tends to take a broader, big picture view of the entire user's experience with the product
• What UX designers are concerned with

  • Typography and colors
  • Motion design
  • Tone of the content
  • Information architecture
• Prototyping

  • Graphic designers often create mockups and wireframes of their designs prior to delivering a finished design. It gives a chance for clients to offer feedback on their designs and for them to improve them without having to start from scratch. UX designers create mockups and prototypes too, but these tend to be less focused on the “look” of the product and more on the “feel” of it. Is the prototype useful? Is it usable? Is it desirable? These are the questions a UX designer wants answers to.
• The Big Benefit of Graphic Design Experience when Moving to UX Design

  Aesthetics

  • The biggest benefit for graphic designers moving to UX design is that they can make things attractive. A very common misconception about UX design is that good usability trumps aesthetics. On the contrary, good aesthetics have been found to improve the overall user experience of product—by making users more relaxed, creating a positive first impression, and generally just showing that you care.
• Aesthetics


  Help designers communicate with internal stakeholders in their companies
• Graphic design skills

  • Often thought of as optional in UX research
  • Can have a big impact on well-presented beautiful findings