Module 1: Design Foundations

What Makes Design Good

Every poster, menu, logo and Instagram post you see was designed by someone, and you judge it in a fraction of a second. If the message is unclear, the text is hard to read or the layout feels messy, people move on. Good design is not decoration added at the end. It is the work of making a message clear, useful and appealing to a specific audience. Before you learn tools and techniques, you need a reliable way to tell good design from bad, so that you can judge your own work honestly.

Design is communication with a purpose

Graphic design is visual problem solving. A client or employer has a goal: sell more school uniforms, announce a church fundraiser, explain a new M-Pesa payment option to shop customers. Your design succeeds when it helps reach that goal. This means the first question is never "Does it look nice?" but "Does it do its job for the people who will see it?"

A useful way to judge any design is to check four qualities:

• Clarity: Can the viewer understand the main message within a few seconds? Is it obvious what to read first?
• Relevance: Does the style suit the audience and the brand? A law firm and a children's party planner should not look the same.
• Usability: Can people actually use it? Text must be readable at the size and distance it will be seen, and contact details or prices must be easy to find.
• Craft: Are the details right? Consistent spacing, aligned elements, no spelling mistakes, sharp images, colours that print correctly.

Beauty matters, but it serves these four qualities. A beautiful flyer that hides the event date has failed.

Form follows function

The phrase "form follows function" comes from architecture, and it applies well to graphic design. The shape and style of a design (its form) should come from what it needs to do (its function). A road sign uses big, simple letters and strong colour because drivers have about a second to read it. A wedding invitation can use elegant script lettering because guests will hold it and read it slowly. Neither choice is good or bad on its own. Each is right or wrong for its situation.

When you start a project, write down in one sentence what the design must achieve and who it is for. Every later decision about colour, font, image and layout should support that sentence.

Worked example: a salon price list

Imagine Wanjiru runs a hair salon in Kilimani, Nairobi. Her current price list is a printed A4 sheet taped to the mirror. It lists 30 services in the same small font, centred, in five different colours, with a clip-art border. Customers keep asking the stylists what things cost.

Apply the four qualities:

1. Clarity: Nothing stands out, so the eye has no starting point. Fix this by grouping services under clear headings such as Braiding, Treatments and Styling.
2. Relevance: The clip art feels dated for a modern salon. Replace it with a clean layout using the salon's logo colour as one accent.
3. Usability: Customers read the list from their chair, about a metre away. Increase the text size and align the prices in a column on the right so they can be scanned quickly.
4. Craft: Five colours compete. Use one dark colour for text, one accent colour for headings, and consistent spacing between groups.

The new list has the same information, but customers can now find the price for "knotless braids, medium" in seconds. That is good design: the business problem (repeated questions, slow service) has been solved.

Developing your eye

Judgement improves with deliberate practice. Each day, look at the designs around you: matatu graphics, supermarket shelf labels, billboards, apps on your phone. Ask yourself what the designer wanted you to notice first, whether it worked, and what you would change. Collect examples you admire and examples that confuse you. Over a few weeks you will start to see patterns in what works.

It also helps to describe designs in words. Instead of saying "I like it", say "The large headline and lots of empty space make the offer easy to spot." Precise language makes it easier to explain your choices to clients later.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Designing for yourself: Your personal taste is less important than what the audience needs and expects.
• Adding more to fix a weak design: Extra colours, effects and graphics usually make a design harder to read. Removing things is often the better fix.
• Ignoring the viewing context: A design that looks fine on your laptop may be unreadable on a phone screen or a banner seen from across a road.
• Skipping the proofread: A wrong phone number or misspelled name can ruin an otherwise excellent piece and cost the client money.

Keep these four qualities and the idea of form following function in mind throughout this course. Every lesson that follows gives you tools to make designs clearer, more relevant, more usable and better crafted.