Product Designer Julie Cheung, describes herself as “passionate about simplifying systems and building throughtful products.” In the design community, this is a must. Julie takes this thinking a step further with her piece on 3 Ways To Improve Your Visual Design, posted earlier this year. The article is intended for beginners getting into visual design, but we feel any designer, beginner or advanced, can benifit from these widely used concepts. You can see a snipet of her article below the break.

I’ve noticed a trend after screening dozens of junior designer portfolios. Designers (mostly from bootcamps) were heavily focused on UX and evangelizing the Design Thinking mindset popularized by consultancies like IDEO. What lacked was the ability to breath life into designs, and portfolios fell flat in showcasing visual design fundamentals taught in art school.

As of April 2017, a quick search on Glassdoor reveals that companies are hiring more Product Designers capable of end-to-end design.

I started off my career as a graphic designer and through trial and error, learned the art of layout and composition. Reflecting upon my journey, I’ve come a long way since my first school project:

Luckily visual design skills can be learned over time! Here’s one of my recent projects:

Today I’ll share 3 tips to improve your visual design skills.

1 — Establish visual hierarchy Visual hierarchy is organizing information by order of relative importance, and its established by arranging components (typography, lines, shapes, images, color, and space) on a layout. Designs with strong visual hierarchy and composition will communicate a message by seamlessly guiding your eyes. For example, let’s look at how Airbnb arranges components on their website: Visual hierarchy is established by arranging components to convey high-priority information first and low-priority information last. This is often an exercise of balancing user needs with business goals. For Airbnb, the business goal is to increase signups for work-related accounts, while user needs are to search for places to stay. In other words, business goals trump user needs on this page. Strong visual hierarchy and composition will guide your eyes fluidly across a layout. Poor visual hierarchy will result in miscommunication or confusion.

Feast your eyes on these bad boys:

Practice establishing visual hierarchy by creating many variations of a design using different component styles, and use the black-and-white technique when you feel stuck. A few tips on components:

Fonts — Larger and bolder fonts capture attention and should be used sparingly for headers.

Larger and bolder fonts capture attention and should be used sparingly for headers. Lines — Lines help separate groups of information, serve as layout grids, and can fill awkward white space.

— Lines help separate groups of information, serve as layout grids, and can fill awkward white space. Color — Darker and more saturated colors draw more attention.

— Darker and more saturated colors draw more attention. Shapes —Simply shapes (circle, triangles, squares) are generally more aesthetically pleasing.

—Simply shapes (circle, triangles, squares) are generally more aesthetically pleasing. Images — Images can be enticing, but try to stay away from stock photography.

— Images can be enticing, but try to stay away from stock photography. Space — Space is your best friend. Use it to separate groups of information or to isolate (highlight) important things.

If you need help understanding the fundamentals of visual design components, Steven Bradley wrote some amazing posts on lines, color, shapes, and space.