Designing with Principle

My first university level design class, what I learned, and what I created.

When I entered my freshman year of college, along with my general classes, I took one animation class, and one design class. I ended up dropping the animation path, and went with the design route instead. In the design class I learned about the principles of design. Something that guides all design, and can make the difference between good and bad design.

As the class started, we would pick a few design principles each week to create a document about, which would include examples of good and bad uses of each principle, and a definition that explained what the principle was for and how to use it. I worked my way through quite a few principles, which helped my design work, and created a base for my design projects in the future.

When we had enough base to start from we began designing small pieces that would show case each principle specifically, and eventually combined principles together to create pieces with.

We created designs each week, eventually building up to the midterm and final projects which included a vast number of principles to integrate, and work with in one piece.

The projects taught me how to design with principles, which made my work better, and allowed me to design with purpose. The course also taught me about the principles of design, and gave me the vocabulary/knowledge to talk about design from a designers point of view.

Brittany Keller is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. The following article relates to (Final design project) in the (DGM 2271 Course) and representative of the skills learned.