Design Principles — Emphasis

Now that I’ve been digital scrapbooking for more than 2 years, I’ve decided it’s time to “kick it up a notch” — you know, try to take my layouts to the next level. Join me every Monday on the blog as we tackle different ways to Kick It Up a Notch and play with creativity.

This week I’m focusing on design principles and how you can use them in your scrapbooking. There are 6 design principles — emphasis, contrast, balance, alignment, repetition, and flow (a.k.a. ECBARF). We’ll look at each of these principles separately over the next several months, starting with emphasis.

Emphasis

Debbie Hodge — owner, teacher, and writer at the site Get It Scrapped! — has been writing superb articles about these design principles over at The Daily Digi. I LOVED what she shared in her post on Emphasis, so please go read it. She does a fabulous job of not only telling, but SHOWING how to use this principle in your scrapbook layout designs. Seriously awesome stuff.

In a nutshell, emphasis is that focal point on your layout that draws the eye of the viewer and establishes the hierarchy to lead them through the story. The most important part of your page should be the most prominent piece on the page. Debbie suggests 3 places in your scrapbook layout where you can show emphasis — in the photo, in the title, and in the journaling — and she illustrates each of these with layouts so you can SEE exactly what she’s talking about.

K, so now we know we can emphasize the photo, the title, or the journaling (whichever of those 3 is the most important to the story or purpose of the layout) … how do we go about doing that? Here are Debbie’s suggestions from her article (again, go read her article to see some fabulous examples):

Contrast
White space
Placement
Establish and break a pattern
Call attention with a frame, embellishment, etc.

I am most definitely a visual learner, so I love seeing examples … but if I want to REALLY learn a principle, I have to try it out. First, I looked through some of my previous layouts to see how I have used emphasis in the past (you know, see what I’m already good at and build my confidence a bit) … and then I decided to scrap a couple more using Debbie’s suggestions. Here we go!

Pages from the Past

In this layout I used a large picture to show off the mud on my son’s mouth. The large title draws attention to the theme of the layout — with the most important word, taste, emphasized with a chunky bright alpha. I used a different, larger font for the quote, and then told the specific story in a smaller handwriting font.

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This layout was all about the journaling. I used a larger title than the text so at first glance you know exactly what this layout is about. And then I used different colors on some of the words in the journaling (=contrast) to carry some of the emotion of the page to the reader.

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Another picture-less layout … I used wordart to emphasize the big pieces of the story … the rest of the story is in my handwriting.

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The white space in this layout really isolates the three pictures and draws attention to them … and the larger photo catches your eye first. Embellishing the larger picture adds further emphasis to it.

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New Pages with Emphasis

In this layout, I established a pattern (square boxes) and then broke free of the pattern by making one of the boxes bigger and tilting it.

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I emphasized placement in this layout, arranging the large photo so that my son’s face is in the “sweet spot.”

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Go read Debbie Hodge’s article on emphasis for more examples and detail. Then follow her prompt to look through your layouts and see how you’ve already emphasized photos or titles or journaling. Then give one of the techniques a try. I think you just might be happy with the results. And please share with me what you’ve learned!