The principles of design are a set of fundamental guidelines that help designers create beautifully succinct and compelling pieces of design. They are not simply rules that govern your designs, but lenses in which to view your artwork through to calibrate it in a significant way to achieve dynamic human-centered designs. These principles include: balance, contrast, emphasis, proportion, movement, pattern, and unity.

This article will be taking a closer look at the principle of contrast to better understand how it affects design, how it can be used to elevate the user experience, and to discuss some simple tips and tricks for contrast that you can incorporate into your designs today.

Back to basics: The definition of contrast & what makes a good contrast design?

All designs no matter if it is a printed poster or a web page design contains a variety of different and opposing elements. These can include a range of dark to light components, an array of textures, or even an assortment of colors. To ensure that all these elements do not overwhelm the experience of your design, you will have to use contrast to create a visual hierarchy for your elements to help guide the order in which they are viewed, while conveying any meaning of importance or priority.

A simple way of explaining the principle of contrast, is the technique to create a noticeable difference between two or more objects that are in juxtaposition or within very close proximity to one another in order to direct attention to one element over the other. To better understand how to use contrast in your next design project, let’s discuss how it can benefit the user experience of a website or application.

How much does contrast matter in design and the user experience?

Contrast has a significant impact on the success of design projects, because it leverages the human cognitive pattern to quickly identify and assess contrasting objects. This ability naturally evolved in humans to quickly identify a foreign object that could pose a threat to their livelihood in the wilderness or simple differences in the landscape.

As psychology has continued to blend into design, there are now eye tracking tools that can be paired with your prototyping tools to see how a person may perceive a collection of components on your webpage. Through the use of contrast, a user can instinctively locate a primary button or how to delete an email by having the designer create a visual difference between that component and the ones that surround it.

By conducting psychological research, as it relates to design, there have been four key dimensions of contrast that humans perceive and process quickly. They include: color, orientation, size and motion.

• Color: The colors chosen for each component of your design can alter the way and the order in which humans perceive them. Complimentary colors are great for this because they sit opposite to one another on the color wheel, which means they work well together while also contrasting with one another.
• Orientation: The orientation of an object can help a user tell the difference between two components and assign a function to it, an example of this would be a caret in UI. If the caret is facing down it means it is currently hiding additional content, if clicked on the caret will face up signaling to the user that all the content is now being shown.
• Size: The size of objects can help convey the hierarchy of elements. In web design heading font sizes are used to show the order of importance.
• Motion: The motion of objects can be used to articulate a particular status to a user. For example, an icon of a spinning circle can convey to the user that something is loading, whereas when it is still it means it is finished.

One of the most essential uses for contrast, is to help make your designs are accessible for anyone who has a visual disability. People with a visual disability may have difficulty noticing the difference between elements, like their color, which contrast can be used in order to help make a more distinct difference between them to elevate the user experience. It is important that all designers commit time to read and understand web accessibility standards so that they can make sure that anyone that visits your website has a similar user experience.

Top tricks and methods to check your project for optimal contrast performance.

Now that you know a little more about the importance of contrast and how it can be used in design, let’s take a look at a list of common tricks and methods that designers use to optimize their web designs.

1. Visual Scale: Through the use of different sized elements you can build a visual hierarchy that helps guide the focus of users to direct and assist them in quickly locating the actions they want to make.
2. Accessibility: Use accessibility tools like contrast checkers to ensure you are meeting the accessibility standards outlined by the WCAG 2.1.
3. User testing: Use eye tracking tools and other methods during your usability testing with users to see how your contrast decisions effect the user experience of your designs and prevent unnecessary errors.
4. Practice your principles: As you continue to work to perfect your design skills, experiment with different variations of contrast to see how it effects the visual appearance along with the user experience of your designs. Explore how to use light and dark colors, color temperatures, color intensity, and sizing to create visual hierarchies.

Contrast is a powerful design principle, that when used purposefully and strategically can not only elevate your designs but help improve the overall user experience, while making sure it is accessible for all users. There are many tools and resources available that can help guide you as you experiment with contrast, but always remember to take the time to test out your designs with users to ensure your contrast decisions are creating the intended experience for your users.

Author’s bio: Dan Silveira is a UX designer, foresight strategist, and writer based out of Toronto, Canada where he works for a major enterprise technology company. He is passionate about design and sharing his experience with others in the field.