Design is Communication

“It happened by design.”

Good design doesn’t happen by chance. Good design happens from executed purpose and intent. However, what sets the purpose and intent? What guides the design to make it “good”?

I used to believe that good design was something that looked “cool”. But design is more than simply looking interesting or cool. Design is communication. Just like a writer or a speaker chooses their words to communicate a message, good designers choose the right visual elements to also communicate a message. The larger goal and message for the design and effectively communicating that message is what makes good design, “good”.

The “words” of design

Graphic Design — Harmony and Form

In graphic design, communication happens through form and figure, color, composition, and typography. Each graphical element is a “word”, such as the color of a shape. The color palette becomes a “sentence”. How those colors are woven together throughout the design becomes a “paragraph”. These paragraphs communicate meaning in the design.

UI Design — Hierarchy and Interactions Between Elements

In UI design, communication also happens through the visual elements, but additionally through the animations and interactions with those elements. Informational hierarchy creates a sense of primary actions on a page or things the user should pay attention to. Hover effects and other affordances, such as the use of shadow or shape, communicate that something should be clicked on or interacted with. Animation communicates how different interactive elements or states in an interface relate to one another. This is why buttons that look like buttons get clicked. Similarly, users are more inclined to swipe left or right on items that appear from the left or right of the screen.

UX Design — User Events and Features

In UX design, communication happens through events the user experiences and the features available to the user. For example, achievements in a running app offer encouragement for a user to continue running. Notifications that an order has been shipped offer piece of mind and tell the user to be prepared for their arriving order. Having a feature to return an order tells the user that returns are accepted and that the company cares about the user’s satisfaction.

How do we know what we’re communicating?

As designers we may have to balance all of these messages at different levels, which can make it difficult to focus on what we really want to communicate. A single app will contain graphic, UI, and UX design messages. In trying to communicate these various messages it’s easy to get caught up in the details of the words themselves and how a design sentence “sounds” rather than it’s actual meaning. Remembering what we’re communicating for each type of design and writing this down can help us focus on the messages we’re communicating.

Get feedback to understand what you’re communicating to others

Additionally, getting feedback from others is a great way to understand what we’re communicating. More importantly, listen to what a person is saying and try to understand why they are saying the things they are saying on the surface. If someone says that a design is “really dark”, what does that really mean? Does the design make the user feel sad, or is it hard to read? Ask questions to the person to understand what they mean, how they feel, and why they feel that way. Additionally, ask yourself, “is this how I want people to feel?” If not, try to understand what creates those feelings in your design and how you can communicate what you’re really aiming for. In the end, if what you want to say doesn’t communicate to others, it’s only useful to yourself.

Conclusion

Good design is like a well-written book or speech. All of the words have been carefully chosen to guide the reader or listener through a series of ideas that communicate an overall message. If we consider what messages we want to communicate, choose our design “words” carefully, and get feedback about what we communicated from others, we can all create great designs.

What are some ways that you ensure your designs communicate? And what have you been communicating lately?