How to Get Better at Composition and Creative Layouts?

Composition is important and it must be up to scratch even if your graphics element is the most beautiful in the world. Composition in simple terms is the aspect of bringing together separate elements to form something whole. In forming a cohesive design, you must get creative with the layouts to ensure that your colors, graphics, and images complement each other.

How To Get Better at Composition and Creative Layouts

To create the perfect design, every element in it must be effective and highly functional. Making such a composition successful involves the arrangement, distribution, alignment, and compilation of every element to be on point. Mastering these will help make your design better.

Here are some techniques and tips to help you get better at composition and creative layout.

1. Find your focus

It is important to be focused. Having a strong focal point is the key element to a good composition and a creative layout. This is because it helps the eyes to focus on the pieces of your design that are most important.

Always remember that communication is the main goal when choosing a focal point. You must pick a solid focal point that will tell the story as effectively and strongly as possible, whether communicating some information, an idea, or an emotion or feeling. You can draw focus through techniques such as contrast, scale, and leading lines.

2. Let the leading lines direct the eyes

Similar to how you would point to something when you want to draw people’s attention to it, you can control your design’s viewpoint by positioning certain shapes and lines in certain ways. That is, controlling where the attention of your viewer goes when looking at your design. The use of leading lines that is common and that you might be aware of is within flow charts.

Lines are used in flowcharts to move the direction of your eyes from one point to another in an obvious way. You can also be guided to various other points or tiers of information by leading lines. When your leading lines are well positioned and adjusted, you direct the eye throughout the whole design in addition to the design’s focal point.

3. Hierarchy and scale

Visual hierarchy and scale are among the creative fundamentals that can determine the outcome of your design. As a result, you must pay attention to them for a successful composition. To visually signify the importance of an object, hierarchy is used to arrange and design the elements.

With this technique, you can make an element that is more important bolder and bigger than an element that is less important which might be fainter and smaller. To get a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of this aspect, ensure that you look into the different levels of topographic hierarchy in your design.

To communicate hierarchy, scale is commonly used. This is as it draws attention away from and toward certain elements within the design. As a result, their importance is more pronounced in communication.

4. Balance out your elements

There are many ways in which balance is very important. This also affects your designs. Therefore, striking a balance in your design will make you better at composition and creative layouts. In terms of balance, you can either use the symmetrical balance or the asymmetrical balance.

For symmetrical balance, your design is balanced using symmetry. You can create a strong sense of balance when reflecting some particular elements in your design from top to bottom, or right to left. Your design can be made clean, elegant, and beautifully balanced when you use symmetry.

Asymmetrical balance is another type. It is perhaps the more common one among the two. What asymmetrical balance simply does is create balance without symmetry.

5. Use complementary elements

If you are aware of complementary colors, then it is time for you to know that there is something like complementary design elements. Taking time to purposefully pick every element in your design is one key factor to a successful and effective composition. The element you select must complement each other as well.

You will be making a big mistake if you make use of images that do not complement each other in your design. Therefore, make sure that when using multiple images in your design they all look cohesive and effective when grouped. Being able to achieve this will make you better in composition and creative layout.

6. Enhance or reduce your contrast

Contrast is a fantastic tool for both hiding and highlighting specific elements in your design. An element can stand out and attract attention by having more contrast or by using a feature color with high contrast. The contrast can also be decreased to make an element disappear into the background.

While other vibrant colors would serve to hide an element in a design, some can serve to highlight it. Contrast can be used in this manner to both add meaning to your designs and to help you conceal certain elements in them. To draw attention to an element or away from it, use contrast in your design strategically.

7. Repeat some elements of your design

Try to incorporate particular elements from one section of your design into other sections to maintain a logical layout and consistency. Perhaps you can use the same typeface in multiple places in your design or utilize the same graphic motif more than once.

As a result, try using repeated elements to unify your design. Concerning multi-page layouts, repetition is a crucial element. Each page flows into the next when certain design and layout elements are repeated, resulting in a cohesive set of pages.

Conclusion

The composition of your design requires careful consideration of several factors. Keep at it even though it might take some time and effort, especially if you’re just starting. Move things around, resize elements, and then move them again. Doing so can make you better at composition and creative layout.