A little bit to the Right
“…I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but can you try moving it a little bit?”
As a designer you might have heard “Move it down” or “move it a little” a few or million times, these remarks all point to one of the essential principles of design, Alignment.
Alignment creates a sharper, more ordered design. It creates a visual connection between elements in your design. It tightens the design and eliminates the messy effect which comes when items are placed randomly.
Aligning elements which are not in close proximity with each other, helps to provide an invisible connection between them.
Alignment is one of the basic and important principles of design. It allows us to create order and organisation among elements.
There are 3 basic forms of alignment,
- Horizontal alignment which includes:
- left-justified
- right-justified
- centered
- fully justified
2. Vertical alignment elements can be aligned vertically — top, bottom, or middle (center).
3. Baseline alignment would be aligning elements to the baseline.
Alignment can make or mar a design, don’t assume only junior designers make such mistake, let’s take a quick peek at NBA’s Recent rebrand (sort of).
One of the the sub brands, NBA Summer league,
This might seem like a perfect logo, but once you see what is below, you can’t unsee it. (Reader’s discretion is advised)
The “E” is about 1px off and needs a little moving to the left which in turn caused a more disastrous effect.
…and now the logo is ruined just because someone had an alignment oversight.
Remember that logo or deliverable the client declined? It might have needed you to move it a little bit to the right.
Disclaimer: This is not any way to put to shame the work OCD(Original Champions of Design) has put into the rebranding of NBA.
