C.R.A.P
Contrast,Repetition,Alignment,Proximity
Understanding Contrast
- Using small and large fonts
- Using colours from opposite sides of the colour wheel.
- Having dark coloured text on a light coloured background and light coloured text on a dark coloured background.
- Dark and light coloured colours include black and white.
- Both cards have exactly the same information
- The second card has a contrasting font size and makes use of contrasting background/text colours
Understanding Repetition
- There are two types of repetition...
- The first is repeating the same word a number of times "Sale Sale Sale" uses repetition to get the message across. In this case that there is a sale on
- The second repetition is the same as consistency. If you choose a particular font size/colour for a heading or body text you should stick to it.
- It repeats the title three times to help emphasize what the flyer is about
Understanding Alignment
- Alignment is a big word that basically means making sure things line up. None of the examples we have done so far has had any sort of alignment needed.
- Alignment is needed when you have blocks of images or text. It also means not mixing left, right, centre and justified alignment when blocks are close to each other.
- The company name lines up with the photo at the top. The email address does the same at the bottom.
- Using the arrow keys to move objects around one pixel at a time.
- Increasing or reducing the size of the space between words to help get the size to match.
- Using separate text boxes for each block of text and making use of the alignment options
- To get more precise font sizes type in the font size such as 10.5
Understanding Similarity and Proximity
- In the three examples, all show good use of similarity. The first on size, the second on colour and the third on the shape.
- Proximity is another word for close. It just means keeping things that are similar/ related close to each other.
- You should not put half of a person's address at the top of a document and the other half at the bottom.
Well written post. A a very clearly presented summary of the four CRAP principles required in designing documents. Refer back to this post and try to think about all of these when you are developing your design work. You could try to add in an example to help illustrate each aspect of the CRAP principles. Which principle do you think is the most effective?
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