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Summary:
Variety is when there is a good amount of various elements that keep the design intriguing. Variety can go hand-in-hand with other parts of the design. It is important to know how to use it or else your design will be stressful to look at.

Reflection:
The article gives a lot of in-depth examples with explanations of how to use variety. The writer explains why variety is important and how to avoid using it incorrectly.

About Jennifer Gaskin      A veteran of newsrooms and agencies, and About Jennifer Gaskin. “A Brief Guide to Variety - A Design Principle.” Venngage, 31 Jan. 2023, venngage.com/blog/design-principle-variety/.

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You've no doubt heard the phrase, "Variety is the spice of life". As it turns out, variety is also the spice of good design.

As a design principle, variety can help draw readers in, highlight important facts and create visual interest in your business communications.

Let's learn more about this unique principle, some examples of variety in design and how you can use variety to your advantage in your brand's communications - from infographics to annual reports. But remember, as with actual spices, a little variety goes a long way.

Click to jump ahead:

What does variety mean in design?

Variety is one of the most straightforward design principles out there - it means just what it says. By varying colors, shapes, typography and other elements, businesses can ensure their visual communications are engaging and informative.

Variety has the added benefit of helping you achieve other design principles, like repetition, emphasis and movement. That's not to say you should strive for a design that has variety turned up to 100%. Going too far in the variety direction can make a design feel chaotic.

Case in point:

This satirical website was intentionally designed to break all the rules. But it gets the point across: using too much variety in a design will confuse your audience and may even unsettle them. When I see a design like that, I get the same feeling as when I look around my office and see that I've let it get too cluttered.
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Why is variety important in design?

Variety is important in design because it can help a designer guide the reader down the page, highlight important information and create or reinforce a visual theme. It also helps keep brand communications from feeling stock or standard, as it clues readers in to the idea that a real person thought about this material.

Varying certain elements in a design can help you follow many of the other main principles of design, too. Let's take a closer look at some of these related principles:

Repetition: you might think repetition and variety would conflict, but in reality, variety helps temper repetition. Using these two principles in concert is one of the best ways to create an overall design theme. The reader gets just enough variety and repetition, without being beaten over the head with either.

Emphasis: Calling attention to important items in your design means using variety (and other design principles) to make things larger, give them a different color or otherwise make them eye-catching.

Movement: Using variety to help push the readers' eye down the page can also reinforce the movement design principle, which gives the reader subtle (or obvious) visual cues about the flow of information.

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Examples of the variety principle in design

Now that we understand a little bit more about the variety design principle, let's take a look at some examples of it in action, so you can see for yourself the impact smart use of variety can have.

The following infographic has a clear and unmistakable use of variety to bring visual interest to the information. Imagine the boxes in this design were all the same color or the icons were all of the same shade. The eye would have no idea what to do or where to go, and the average reader would tune out this information.

Variety can also come into play with placement of information, as in this infographic design, which varies placement of written content with each new row, swapping from side to side. You can also see how the designer used a variety of shapes and colors to bring movement and rhythm to the design, without going overboard.

Even subtle use of variety can be effective. Consider the top section of this infographic, which uses shapes meant to evoke a Pinterest board. While they're in a row and it's clear the three shapes go together, the designer has dropped one slightly lower than the rest, which adds energy and excitement to the design.

When applying variety to your designs, it's important to remember some elements should remain consistent. In this infographic, for example, all of the smaller icons throughout are in a similar style, which creates cohesiveness. If the designer had chosen a different style for each icon, the result would be a confusing mess.
Just so you know, some of our infographic templates are free to use and some require a small monthly fee. Sign up is always free, as is access to Venngage's online drag-and-drop editor. Return to Table of Contents
Tips for using variety in design

Here are some tips and tricks to help you add variety to your business communications:

Use the squint test

I learned to do the squint test when I was studying newspaper design in college, and it basically goes like this: Look at your design and purposefully squint or un-focus your eyes until the design appears blurry. If it looks like one big blob of text, it's likely there's not enough variety in it.

The squint test can also help you identify if your design is imbalanced or the wrong elements are emphasized. Sometimes a fix is as simple as varying type treatments, like in the infographic below:

For more simple graphic design tips like this one, check out our blog: 11 Actionable Graphic Design Tips for Beginners, According to Design Experts

Stick to a style

I've touched on this already, but using variety doesn't mean every element in your design should be completely unique... nor should everything be exactly the same.

This can be a tricky balancing act. Think of it this way: you're aiming for siblings, not twins. That means using a consistent color palette, fonts and icons, as in the following annual report template:

Consider color

Varying the colors you use is one of the easiest ways to bring variety to your designs. And you can do this in a number of ways, whether it's by using different shaded boxes, icons, illustrations or typography.

This infographic uses a couple of different methods, including shaded boxes and varying colors in text, to amp up the variety. But remember that consistent style applies to type as well. Note the designer stuck with a consistent color palette, even though they varied colors from section-to-section.
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Variety FAQ

What are the 7 types of principles of design?

There are far more than seven design principles, but the seven often considered most crucial are unity, hierarchy, repetition, emphasis, alignment, contrast and balance.

Is variety a principle of design?

Yes, variety is a principle of design that says you should strive to vary elements like colors, shapes and fonts to hold your readers' attention and help guide them down the page.

What is unity and variety in principles of design?

In design, unity and variety could seem like they're at cross purposes, but they actually go hand-in-hand - they're both about creating visual interest and engagement, without the boring feeling of sameness. Unity is more of a design goal than a principle and variety is an important stepping stone toward that goal.
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Too much variety and you'll overwhelm your reader, but too little and they won't be interested

There's no doubt that variety, while it's one of the most straightforward design principles, can also be one of the trickiest to apply. It can be tough to know when you've gone too far or not far enough.

But with business communication in particular, it's safe to say a little of this design spice goes a long way.

And if you're looking to achieve the perfect balance of variety and repetition, look no further than Venngage's library of professionally-designed templates. While you're practicing this principle, a template can be a great place to start.

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A Brief Guide to Variety - A Design Principle - Venngage

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You've no doubt heard the phrase, "Variety is the spice of life". As it turns out, variety is also the spice of good design. As a design principle, variety can help draw readers in, highlight important facts and create visual interest in your business communications.

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Summary:
Rhythm is when you repeat elements in an interesting, but unifying way. It uses all the principles of design. Rhythm guides your eyes and helps the design elements work together.

Reflection:
This article explains how all the design elements work together to make rhythm. They give a lot of good examples of what this can look like and they also tell the reader how to avoid mistakes when trying to achieve rhythm.

“Value of Rhythm in Design.” Outcrowd, www.outcrowd.io/blog/value-of-rhythm-in-design. Accessed 16 May 2023.

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6 effective methods by Outcrowd

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Rick Mess | Apr 9, 2020

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If we strive to create a flawless composition - it's time to turn to rhythm. It's all around us: in night and day cycles, seasons change, breath and heartbeat. Rhythm is essential for our lives and harmony.

Good design is just like your favorite song - it has rhythm. Many think rhythm is only about the picture while that's a minor part of its potential.

Rhythm is so powerful that it literally hypnotizes. Repetition of words or images effects our mental and emotional state, memory and thinking - in fact, it almost rules our brain.

Armed with only visual and graphical repeat you can attract and refocus one's notice. Not to mention stimulating their memory, making them feel and want particular things. Sounds like a superpower, right?

Rhythm guides us across the page by pointing to texts and images. When turning to the next page - it helps us find where we left off in a wink.

Repeat also stands for image recognition. A sign or logo gets effective not only due to its design but a number of people seeing it daily. It's principally the power of repeating.

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Building rhythm. Rhythm variations

Rhythm in design refers to interval-repeating elements. An agreed elements location creates a sound structure. Rhythm can unite, direct, highlight and set the dynamics.

There is a repetition of shape, color, tone, texture, accents, direction and dynamic. Rhythm organizes, structures and set the elements into motion.

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1. Rhythm of shape

Repeated geometrical figures form rhythm.

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2. Rhythm of color

Multiple one-color elements build a consistent and dynamic design.

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3. Rhythm of tints and tones

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You can make a rhythm by changing color saturation. Stain elements with different tones of the same color to compose a tuneful rhythm.

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4. Rhythm of lines

Cleverly arrange lines to empower the whole composition. Lines can be of different width, length or configuration. It creates a sense of dynamics.

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5. Scaling

Elements scaling is another way to build a rhythm. This technique also helps direct viewer sight.

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6. Emphasis

You can also create a rhythm by combining and highlighting sections and element groups with color.

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Landing page - Rasmos (by Outcrowd)

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Rhythm mistakes

Imaging elements with the same weight and even spaces between is far from a good idea. Viewers often have a hard-to-express bad feeling about it. You should also avoid monotony.

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Instead of Conclusion

To sum up - we build rhythm due to rotation of shape, size, color, texture, tone, etc. Also, you can create it by building headlines and subtitles hierarchy along with highlighting parts of the text.

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Landing Page - DevCarrot (by Outcrowd)

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Well-built rhythm enhances the navigation, helps in digesting information and brings aesthetic pleasure.

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‍ Rick Mess | Apr 9, 2020 ‍ ‍ ‍ If we strive to create a flawless composition - it's time to turn to rhythm. It's all around us: in night and day cycles, seasons change, breath and heartbeat. Rhythm is essential for our lives and harmony.

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Summary:
Proportion is used to create emphasis or to make sizing look more realistic. It can also make the design look more interesting if an exaggerated proportion is used.

Reflection:
The Proportion in Graphic Design article nicely explained what proportion is, the different types, and how to best use it. They use many examples from popular logos to simple shapes.

Peate, Stephen. “Proportion in Graphic Design: The Principles of Design Proportion.” Fabrik Brands, 22 Feb. 2023, fabrikbrands.com/proportion-in-graphic-design-principles-of-design-proportion/.

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Summary:
Repetition is when you repeat similar elements throughout a group of design work. It is not the same as a pattern. It helps unification and emphasis in the design piece.

Reflection:
The article on repetition did a good job of explaining the difference between repetition and pattern. They give examples of good repetition and explain why it is so important to each work.

Ashraf. “Repetition Principle of Design.” Graphic Designer in Nairobi, Kenya, 20 Mar. 2023, 254-online.com/repetition-principle-of-design/.

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In graphic design, there are principles of design that should be considered. These principles are what typically separate good design from bad design. All these principles have a relationship between each other and appear in every well designed piece of work you see.

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Summary:
The pattern is used to create consistency and unity in design. How it is designed and distributed can change the piece's mood.

Reflection:
The article, Pattern In Graphic Design, does an excellent job of explaining how pattern is not just repeated shapes, but also repeated concepts. Pattern came also be the branding of a company. The author even gives examples from well know designers' work.

Peate, Stephen. “Pattern in Graphic Design: The Pattern Principle of Design.” Fabrik Brands, 22 Feb. 2023, fabrikbrands.com/pattern-in-graphic-design-the-pattern-principle-of-design/.

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Pattern In Graphic Design: The Pattern Principle Of Design

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The use of pattern in graphic design doesn’t just have a powerful aesthetic impact, it can also help to send the right messages.

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Summary:
Movement in graphic design aims to move the viewer's eyes toward what's most important. A good design should cause the viewer to interact with it in a way that communicates its purpose.

Reflection:
The article on movement is very useful and a simplified explanation of how movement changes the way someone views a design and how it is used in designs. The author effectively creates word pictures to communicate how proper use of movement is achieved.

“Movement in Graphic Design: Understanding What It Means and How to Use It.” CorelDRAW, www.coreldraw.com/en/tips/graphic-design-principles/movement/#:~:text=What%20Does%20Movement%20Mean%20in,they%20move%20across%20the%20screen. Accessed 16 May 2023.

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In graphic design, you want to control every element of the user's experience as they interact with your product--including the way their eyes move across the screen and how they perceive your final product. Controlling movement is critical to ensuring that your users experience the product the way you intend, whether you want to walk them through an advertisement or put together a comic panel that will tell a comprehensive story.

Understanding movement in graphic design can help prepare you to create more effective content for your viewers.

What Does Movement Mean in Graphic Design?

In graphic design, movement doesn't refer to the movement of the images on the screen. Instead, it refers to movement on the part of the viewer: the movement of the viewer's eyes as they move across the screen. You can guide the viewer's eye to specific elements or create a specific "movement" through the piece by tying the elements of the design together in specific ways.

How to Use Movement in Graphic Design

As you create your designs, there are several strategies you can use to control movement through the piece and encourage viewers to interact with the piece the way you intend.

1. Use repetition to guide viewers through specific areas of the piece.

Often, you may choose to use a repeating element in your design to help guide viewers from one area of it to another. Repetition creates an air of familiarity and a sense of recognition. You do not necessarily have to perfectly repeat a design element to help create that air of repetition; rather, you can simply use very close elements to help guide viewers' eyes. Repetition may also occur in specific color elements that are repeated throughout the piece. Often, graphic designers use color to help unify a piece as well as drawing a viewer's gaze to specific areas.

2. Use rhythm in your design.

Rhythm in design is the specific pattern of repetition that guides viewers through the piece. In many cases, rhythm can help evoke emotion or create the impression you want of a specific piece. You can use short, staccato rhythms or more flowing rhythms to help guide viewer interaction with the design.

3. Evoke a feeling of motion.

Static designs, unlike videos and GIFs, do not actually include movement--but with the right design elements, you can create the impression that they do. Capture your subject in mid-motion: crashing waves, dancing people, jumping animals. With those feelings of movement, you will naturally guide the viewer's gaze along the path that the subject would take, were the motion to finish.

4. Use lines effectively.

Through your designs, you may include lines that naturally guide your viewer's gaze and control their movement through the piece. Those lines may be literal lines, including arrows or other key visual elements, or they might simply be lines of design and movement through the piece that naturally guide the viewer's eyes to take a specific path as they take in the content.

Conclusion

Movement in graphic design helps control how your audience interacts with the piece and how they ultimately view it. With the right design elements, you can guide viewers to take the journey you want them to take as they interact with the piece. Through these strategies, you can help control the way viewers interact with the content and give them a better idea of how you want them to perceive it.

CorelDRAW can help you create and control the elements of movement in your graphic design. Take a look at our software today to start creating highly effective designs for marketing, artistic, or personal use.

Need to Download CorelDRAW?

Download a Free 15-Day Trial Now!

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In graphic design, you want to control every element of the user's experience as they interact with your product--including the way their eyes move across the screen and how they perceive your final product.

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Summary:
Balance is when design elements coincide to create a sense of completion. It is when objects, space, colors, and texture are placed in a way to achieve a certain visual weight through the proper distribution of elements. There are 5 elements of balance (Symmetrical, Asymmetrical, Radial, Mosaic, and Discordant).

Reflection:
The article on balance was very helpful in explaining how to create balance and what the different types of balance do. They also go further to help the reader understand the design concept by creating imagery.

“Understanding the Importance of Balance in Graphic Design.” Pluralsight, 26 Jan. 2023, www.pluralsight.com/blog/film-games/understanding-balance-graphic-design.

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Summary:
Unity is achieved by having all the design principles in a piece work together to make it look unified. By leaving one principle out, you could risk causing everything to feel disunified and miscommunicate the purpose of the design.

Reflection:
The author first explains what Unity is, then goes into detail about how each part of design plays into this. They also give examples and show you the best way to have Unity in your work. The article shows the reader how unity plays an important role is all designs because without it, the viewer will not understand what's trying to be communicated.

14, Dan Silveira Jan, et al. “Unity Principle of Design – Unity Defined: Adobe XD Ideas.” Ideas, 14 Jan. 2021, xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/ui-design/principles-design-unity/.

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The seven principles of design have been around for a very long time, and their shared goal is to help guide designers on how to get the very best out of their work. They do this by focusing on the key attributes of each element and how altering even the most minute detail can have a large impact on the overall design.

In this article, we are going to learn about the unity principle of design and how we can use it to improve the visual design of our products.

Unity is the principle of design that unifies all other principles within a piece of work, allowing each individual element to coexist with one another to form an aesthetically pleasing design. Ultimately, unity is what gives a design the appearance of cohesiveness despite its internal components differing in scale, contrast, or style.

A designer must leverage all of the principles of design in order to successfully achieve unity. This is done by assessing all of the elements within the design to better understand their relationships and how they interact with one another. In doing so, the designer is able to ensure that whether it's a painting, poster, or web design, it is consumed as it was intended by the designer.

In short, unity is an agreement between parts that make up the whole. Unity is achieved when each individual element within a design comes together like a puzzle to reveal a singular cohesive vision.

What are the principles of design?

Now, if you are not yet familiar with the principles of design, don't worry. It is likely you are already using them without even knowing. Think about the last time you worked on a design that contained multiple elements, and after stepping back to take a look from afar, you realized something about it just wasn't working. So, you erased some parts and adjusted others until all of it finally seemed to fit together. Well, those instincts you had to change and alter your work were most likely influenced by the principles of design, even if you weren't cognitively aware of it.

The principles of design are a set of seven essential guidelines that help advise designers on how to produce a succinct and compelling piece of work each and every time. These principles include: Balance, Contrast, Emphasis, Proportion, Movement, Pattern, and Unity. Each principle focuses on a key component of design and how its attributes effect the overall presentation of the work. In some cases, ignoring the principles of design can lead the audience to misinterpret the designer's original intentions of the work.

As designers, we often think about design as a vessel for our creativity. The principles of design help us succeed in doing that by providing rules that assist us. By following these rules, we're able to make it so that other people can consume and understand that vision.

Before we dive into the unity principle of design, let's begin by quickly reviewing the other six principles of design.

Balance

Similar to a graph chart, a composition has both a vertical and horizontal axis. Designers must be aware of these axes as they lay out where they should place their key elements. The reason is so that each new element added to the composition includes its own unique visual weight.

Part of a designer's job is to maintain equilibrium and designers will usually assemble their artistic elements in two ways: symmetrically, using the space on either side of the axis in the same way with objects that share very similar characteristics; or asymmetrically, where the space on either side of the axis is mismatched while still maintaining an equal visual weight.

To better understand balance, think about the layout of a webpage. It contains a variety of different pictures, icons, and font sizes. In order for all of these differently sized elements to work together, a designer will have to strategically think of how to lay them out in a way that is balanced and makes it easier to view.

Contrast

Most compositions include a variety of different and opposing elements. This can include a range of lighting, an assortment of colors, or even an array of textures. A designer can increase the contrast between two objects to highlight, for example, one being in the foreground and the other in the background. Using the same example, a designer can also reduce the contrast between the objects to visually place them at the same depth.

There are many ways that elements can contrast one another, which is why it is important for designers to understand how they oppose one another and also how to make those differences work in the overall composition. Contrast is especially important for UX designers to ensure a user interface meets the needs of users with impaired vision.

Contrast is also used to differentiate the actions of buttons. A button that is used to save something will have a very different contrast than one that is used to delete. Without contrast in design, a user's experience would become very frustrating.

Emphasis

In a conference room, a podium is used to bring emphasis to the person who is speaking, whereas in a theater performance, a spotlight is used to bring emphasis to a single performer during their monologue. Similarly, a designer will use a variety of different techniques to make a specific component of the visual design stand out. When done correctly, this can be a useful tool to bring attention to a specific area of the composition.

To better understand emphasis, simply pick up your phone and open your favorite app. Look at how color, contrast, and scale are used to emphasize a certain button, icon, or action over others.

Proportion

Proportion is simply the scale of each individual object. By adjusting the scale of different elements, a designer can convey one object's relationship to another, their hierarchical structure, or even their distance from one another. Proportion brings organization and understanding to a design that, without it, may struggle to express its intended meaning.

Even in this article, you can see how the proportion of the heading sizes helps to organize thoughts and ideas for the reader. Though this article would still work if it only had a single heading, by breaking it up into parts that are represented by different heading styles, the reading experience is much easier. The reader can easily digest what they are reading.

Movement

As a person views a piece of artwork or interacts with a digital design piece, their focal point will naturally move around the landscape of that piece. This helps the observer better understand what they are looking at or even how to interact with it in some cases.

Mapping out the visual hierarchy from element to element is a powerful and useful tool for designers. This gives them the ability to tell a visual story without having to use any words. It can also help them improve the experience of an app, making it simpler to navigate for the user interacting with it.

UX designers will utilize user testing methods like eye tracking to measure where a person is looking during a given screen. This can inform the designer whether or not the variety of components on a page are aiding or hampering the experience for the user.

Pattern

Naturally, as more and more elements are added to a composition, the likeliness of one or more being repeated increases. As these elements are repeated, a designer needs a way to organize them to bring a sense of semblance to the design. This effect is achieved by implementing a pattern that is visually consistent throughout the artwork.

In more complex designs, multiple patterns will arise, and the designer will then have to consider how to best organize them to achieve unity with variety.

Why the unity principle of design is important

Unity is arguably the most important principle of design. It guides the designer on how to best leverage all the other principles to present a composition that is both harmonious and whole. Only when a designer has ensured that all other principles are working together is unity truly achieved.

Without unity, a seemingly complete design can feel unintentionally segmented, confusing, or in worst cases, unusable. A lack of unity can cause elements to compete with one another for emphasis, resulting in an experience that is contrary to the one the designer had originally intended. This can lead to the user feeling uncertain and confused.

The question then is: how does a designer achieve unity?

How to achieve unity

As previously mentioned, unity is achieved once the design has reached a state of harmony between its internal parts. This is done by first going through each of the other design principles to assess how they are being used within the overall design to ensure each element is having its intended and desired effect.

Often, a lack of unity can be a result of a designer not realizing that the actions taken to meet one principle has had the opposite effect on another. For example, when creating a contrast between two objects, a designer may play with the lighting, color, or scale to convey their relationship. However, if the designer is not careful, those changes could cause those objects to no longer fit within the overall design among the other components.

Therefore, the best way for a designer to ensure unity in their work is to continuously take a step back during the design process and assess whether or not its core makeup is unified. If you are a designer that is part of a team, have your colleagues evaluate your design from a unity perspective during your next design critique. However, if you are a solo designer without a design team to lean on, simply ask someone you know to take a look and observe how they interact with it.

Unity in UX design

When designing for web or mobile, UX designers use layout grids to help guide the cohesiveness of their design.

To ensure a unified experience across web and mobile applications, UX designers conduct a method called a heuristic evaluation. This method consists of leveraging Jakob Nielsen's 10 general heuristic principles to identify possible usability issues within the design of a user interface. Conducting a heuristic evaluation in addition to following the seven principles of design allows designers to unify the visual and experience design of a product.

Another design metric utilized by UX designers to assess unity within design is usability testing. Usability testing is conducted to accurately measure whether or not the intended user views and interacts with the user interface in the way the designer expected. A mismatch between expected and actual interactions can inform the designer which design principle is leading to the issue.

Unity principle of design best practices

As designers' skillsets mature throughout their career, they will inevitably create their own best practices that work for them to ensure their design meets the unity principle of design. Until then, here are some helpful best practices to start with:

1. Whenever adding a new element, object, or component to a design, first decide what its relationship is with the others that already exist in your design.

2. Take a step back from your design and assess: how do the design's internal parts interact with one another?

3. Create a checklist that includes all seven design principles and evaluate how each principle is being used in your design, and whether or not they are working together harmoniously.

4. Have someone look at your design and then break it down for you. You will quickly discover whether the expected intent of your design is what people actually experience when looking at or interacting with it.

It's time to create a unified experience

Design is a complex form of art, and with each new element a designer adds, the complexity only increases. So the next time you begin adding new elements to your design, ask yourself, "How will this impact the unity of my design? Will it work to further the unity or against it and confuse the user?"

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Unity Principle of Design - Unity Defined | Adobe XD Ideas

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The seven principles of design have been around for a very long time, and their shared goal is to help guide designers on how to get the very best out of their work. They do this by focusing on the key attributes of each element and how altering even the most minute detail can have a large impact on the overall design.