A couple weeks ago in my Comm 350 class we discussed the basic design principles that apply to anything from creating your own website, to making homemade Christmas cards. These days we see acronyms all over the place, and when it comes to design, we're blessed with a very memorable and intriguing one known as C.R.A.P. It stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. So the next time someone tells you something you've made looks like crap, take it as a compliment!

     Contrast may refer to any difference of size, shape, or color used to distinguish text or other elements. A good example for the use of contrast can be seen at chubbiesshorts.com. Here is what you'll see when you visit their home page:

   
     Repetition in your text can be bad, but repetition of your design elements is not only good but necessary. A site that does an extensive amount of repetition is reddit.com. You can see below how the site uses the same font, font size, and color to distinguish the titles of each article.

 

     

     Alignment is not only crucial to the appearance of a website or document, but also helps the viewer with navigation and understanding. As you can see at Netflix.com, the site aligns movies horizontally to allow it's customers to easily scroll through movie titles.

     Last but not least is proximity. Pieces of information that are meant to complement each other should be near each other. A great example of proximity is nationalgeographic.com's use of images next to their related article headers.

     

     For more information and tips on the principles or C.R.A.P, visit lifehack.org!