WHAT IS DESIGN PRINCIPLE? The principles of design are the rules a designer must follow to create an effective and attractive composition. The fundamental principles of design are Emphasis, Balance and Alignment, Contrast, Repetition, Proportion, Movement and White Space. Design differs from art in that it has to have a purpose. 1. BALANCE Balance lends stability and structure to an overall design. To understand it better, think that there’s weight behind each of your design elements. Shapes, text boxes and images are the elements that form your design, so it’s important to be familiar with the visual weight each of those elements possesses. Now, this doesn’t mean that the elements always need to be distributed evenly or that they must be of an equal size — balance is either symmetrical or asymmetrical. Symmetrical balance is when the weight of elements is evenly divided on either side of the design, whereas asymmetrical balance uses scale, contrast, and colour to achieve the flow in d