templateYour design is it Crap? Wow i just heard you say now lawmacs sounds crazy but seriously have a look at your website design and ask yourself is this Crap? Well let me explain “Crap” in the world of design is an Acronym not a word which stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. For many of you, you should be familiar with the term Crap as this is what we refer to as good design concept in the designing world. So if you’re wondering what that is all about now you have it. Your design should meet these standards else have a look again and see if any adjustments can be made. If your design is crap then it is of Good standard it is like say bad meaning very well. Now lets look at the four concepts one at time

Contrast simply means difference.. We are not conscious of it, but we are scanning and looking for similarities and differences all the time. Contrast is what we notice, and it’s what gives a design its energy. So you should make elements that are not the same clearly different, not just slightly different. Contrast is one of the most powerful design concepts of them all because really any design element can be contrasted with another. You can achieve contrast in many ways—for example, through the manipulation of space (near and far, empty and filled), through colour choices (dark and light, cool and warm), by text selection (serif and sans serif, bold and narrow), by positioning of elements (top and bottom, isolated and grouped), and so on.

Repetition The principle of repetition simply means the reusing of the same or similar elements throughout your design.

Alignment The whole point of the alignment principle is that nothing in your slide design should look as if it were placed there randomly. Every element is connected visually via an invisible line. Where repetition is more concerned with elements across a deck of slides, alignment is about obtaining unity among elements of a single slide. Even elements that are quite far apart on a slide should have a visual connection, something that is easier to achieve with the use of grids.

Proximity The principle of proximity is about moving things closer or farther apart to achieve a more organized look. The principle says that related items should be grouped together so that they will be viewed as a group, rather than as several >unrelated elements. Audiences will assume that items that are not near each other in a design are not closely related. Audiences will naturally tend to group similar items that are near to each other into a single unit.

There you have it crap is actually a good word in design terms now its over to you tell me is your design Crap?

By Gary

An avid blogger a social media addict

29 thoughts on “Your Design is it Crap ?”
  1. Really enjoyed reading your article Gary. You sure got my attention with the title of this post. 🙂

    Not sure if my design is total crap and that’s why I’m still looking to change my theme. If I follow the 4 points you mention, I’m sure my next design will be crap. 😉

    Excellent post my friend!

    1. Thanks Robert About the headlines that is what attracts readers to your post glad you found it interesting and useful and you just like me never satisfy with my theme looking forward to your new theme.

      1. Yes that’s right.

        We will share the headlines alone in the twitter and facebook and it brings the people into the blog and post if it attracts them 🙂

        Nice post dude and your design is crap man 😉

        1. Thanks for your input Goutham and i am happy to have you here reading and leaving a comment and my post your input is much appreciated.

  2. Your headline has attracted me too. It time for me to customize my old design. These are 4 great point that surely I will follow. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Thanks Nicola glad this post could be of some help to you your site is great and this four points can be very helpful during your customization process.

  3. Really Nice Post dude. I really like the headline of the Post 😀 !

    And your blog design is really great. You’re doing awesome work man.

    Keep up the good work.

    1. Thanks Dev for your continued support here at lawmacs.com yes i really thought out the headline carefully and that is something as bloggers we all do.

    2. Thanks Dev i am just trying to share my knowledge with my fellow bloggers trying to network and help thanks for taking the time to comment here at lawmacs.com

  4. This is new for me. I have never thought of CRAP being called so in design terms. Interesting! Well, I am myself a design enthusiast and after reading this article, I am quite puzzled if I am following this CRAP well on my blog or not. I think it goes well for C,R,A and P is missing to great extent. I should work more on it infact on all of them. Thank you so much bro for sharing these valuable and much appreciated information here. Keep it up 🙂

    1. Thanks bro the more we read and the older we get the more we will learn thanks for your comment and continued support Aswani you input here is greatly appreciated

  5. This is just the perfect thing for me now 🙂 Since I am still changing the design on my website I have to make it look like CRAP 🙂

    PS. added your link to my blogroll with pleasure!

    1. Hi Zarko visit your website earlier and love the way you are customing your Thesis them good luck with it thanks for your support

  6. I think one should have a decent design and layout. I just don’t know if they should spend hour upon end dwelling on it. I belong to some sites and it kind of sounds like a lot of them spend too much time on it. I mean you can have an extremely pretty or different site, but it don’t do much good if nobody comes to it. Anyway interesting post.

    1. You are right we should all have a nice design and a decent layout and try to make our website more attractive this might encourages readers to be more engaging

  7. I’m in constant state of tweaking and touching but I think I am getting a lot closer to CRAP.

    This is why I work with designers. lol They know a lot more about CRAP than I do. 🙂

    Cheers,
    Tia

    1. Thanks for your comment we share the same passion i am always tweaking my site design from time to time seems i am never satsfied with it

  8. Nice topic, my site looked real crappy at the starting, just improving very slowing hopefully we will get something stable and nice looking stuff after sometimes

    1. You will achieve your goals one day sometimes writing post and networking with other bloggers takes up our time but just keep doing what you are doing you will get there soon

  9. That’s a nice catch there Gary, excellent idea. But proximity in design…hmmm…that’s a new thing to me, I wasn’t aware of that term. I guess my design is CRAP, but had to work hard on that “A” part a few days ago while installing a new widget section.

  10. To be frank, I never pay much attention to design as I use standard template but you raised good points. Maybe I can do some customization on proximity and contrast.

  11. Really Nice Post dude. I really like the headline of the Post. My site looked real CRAP at the starting, just improving very slowing hopefully we will get something stable and nice looking stuff after sometimes. Thanks!

  12. These advices are good, but you have to ‘feel’ the topic to make really nice, eye-catching layout. Sometimes that moment comes once in a month only!

  13. I have never thought of using such a thing in my design. To be honest this is really a new term to me. I would really like to create effective design using CRAP theory.

  14. this are points to ponder as this is part of design 101. i hope template designer could read this blog and read on about this one so that they dont create crappy templates.

  15. For a perfect web designer should remember all the tips .These tips are required for professional website design for different purposes.If there will no proper alignment and proximity in the design the website quality is reduced.

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