The excitement for the new Star Wars movie is growing every day. The Force Awakens is coming up fast, and there’s a lot to learn from the original films about design. The visual style of the 1970s movies was quite advanced for its time and is still seen as amazing today. This is because there are some specific design aspects involved, but the following infographic breaks down those elements so that anyone can understand how to use them in their own infographic designs and templates.
Depth
Adding depth to your infographic can be achieved by creating some space between the background, middle and foreground. For instance, if you are placing text or icons in your infographic, playing around with different sizes and levels of opacity can add to this effect.
Contrast
To create a sense of contrast, you can put two different images next to each other that are opposites. In the example shown in the infographic, a small ship is placed next to a large ship to highlight the difference in size and power. Other ways to show contrast can include differences in color, style, tone, texture, and even emotion.
Negative Space
Proper use of negative space will give your infographic a clean and easy to digest appearance. Negative space adds focus to a specific element that you want your reader to pay attention to. For instance, if you position a lone figure in a desert, your focus is automatically drawn to the individual, however if you place a person in a crowd, it becomes more difficult to pin your attention onto someone specific.
Perspective
Have you ever stood at the bottom of a tall building and looked up, thinking to yourself, “Wow, I’m really small,” only to then make your way to the top of the building and look down, remarking that it’s in fact everyone else who is small? This is what perspective is, and it is often overlapped with depth. To create perspective in your infographic it all depends on where you place certain text or icons in relation to each other. Pictograms are a type of chart used in infographics that often highlight a perspective or ratio.
Symmetry
Symmetry essentially adds balance to your infographic. It makes your design more comforting to the human eye and more attractive.
Directional Cues
When you’re ever talking to someone, do you pay attention to where they are directing their gaze? Have you ever noticed that if they are suddenly looking intently in one specific direction, that you can’t help but look to what they are staring at? This is a form of directional cue and forces your audience to turn their gaze in a certain direction or focus on a specific element. In a movie if a person is looking at a rock on the ground, we all focus on the rock, not on the man. Direction in an infographic helps your reader to understand where the focus is. It is often used in conjunction with negative space.
Repetition
Repetition enforces ideas and behaviour. In an infographic repetition can be used by repeating the same word or phrase over and over again to emphasize a point, or using an image to show volume and increase importance of a value.
The Star Wars movies have made excellent use of design, and as complex as they may appear to the untrained eye, if broken down in the right way, anyone can learn how to design with The Force. Use the following infographic for continuous reference when you are creating your own infographics for your content marketing needs.