Because graphic design is, technically speaking, digital design’s grandfather, as the overarching elements of visual communication remain the same.
These include lines, shapes, colors, textures, space, images, and typography or fonts.
However, classifying digital design as an enhancement or an extension of graphic design puts us in an interesting position. Suddenly, we need a way to look at the elements of design from a user-focused perspective, rather than pure aesthetics.
This goes beyond Steve Job’s maxim of design being about how something looks and functions. Digital design’s elements are about how a user behaves and what they expect or experience when they interact with those specific functions.
So, the elements of digital design are actually the elements of interactive design. There are five notable digital design principles all digital designers (which further break down into web, mobile, and UI and UX designers) follow:
- Words or text
- Visual representations (which are the graphic elements we’re all familiar with by now — images, shapes, logos, icons, and typography)
- Physical objects (which considers what mediums a user relies on when interacting with a device — for example, mobile users rely on their fingers or a stylus and their gestures consist of clicks, scrolls, and swipes)
- Time (a curious design factor that defines “media that changes over time,” such as animations, embedded video, and sounds)
- Behavior (which brings together the previous four elements and takes a data-driven, trackable, and quantifiable look at two elements: how a user interacts with the final product and how that product provides feedback that’s adequate or comprehensible by the user. The data or research collected is then used to improve interactions.)
There are other ways to consider digital interactions in a purely digital environment (whether that’s apps, mobile, websites, VR, etc.). These conceptual digital design elements map quite closely onto the five above, with more of a focus on digital design technology.
Digital interactions in a digital environment include:
- Motion — The first trigger for interacting with any product or digital experience.
- Space — The environments or “planes” that designers work in. Currently, most interaction designers stick to screens and 2D design principles. But designers can certainly mock-up and create objects in a 2D space that appear three-dimensional. This is an understated and underutilized area of digital design.
- Time — Instead of media that changes over time, this idea of “time” focuses on digital time, that is, the time it takes for something to respond, appear, complete, initiate, or resolve on your screen. The clicking of a button when you’re shopping or a loading screen when you’re gaming are great examples of this.
- Appearance — This is a weighty digital design concept and focuses on conveying more subtle attributes like cheap versus expensive or complicated versus simple, using classic graphic design elements. When placed in a particular context (defined by motion, space, time, and even real-world culture), appearance can give the user cues on how to interact. Appearance includes variables that designers can play with, including color (hue, tone, saturation), size, shape, structure, proportion, and weight
- Sound — Like 3D environments in interaction design, sound is an underutilized resource right now. This is because we mostly rely on visual cues on our screens. However, as voice user interfaces rise and evolves into conversational AI, sound cues and feedback will be a more essential building block for designers.