Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography major - What are the five basic principles of catalog design?

What are the five basic principles of catalog design?

A catalogue is a guide to an album, which can reflect the content and artistic conception of the whole album. It is the most easily overlooked part when we design an album, and the catalogue of the album also needs to be designed and must be taken seriously. The design of the album catalogue needs to serve the theme of the album, which makes people feel fresh and natural at a glance. Different columns use different colors as the background color, highlighting the difference with other columns. Good at using pictures and words to reflect the whole album. There are five basic principles to follow when designing the catalogue of picture books.

(a) The theme of the table of contents should be highlighted.

The ultimate goal of the layout design of the directory page is to make the layout clear and orderly, the theme of the chapter prominent and eye-catching, and the page number retrieval smooth, so as to achieve the best appeal effect. Highlighting the theme helps to enhance readers' attention to the layout and enhance their understanding of the content. We can grasp and use the spatial hierarchy, master-slave relationship, visual order and logical order between layout pictures and characters, so that the layout design of directory pages can be well guided.

(2) Rational use of directory columns.

Partition is to determine the specific location of layout elements in the layout, such as picture area, title area, etc. It is a structural line hidden in the layout, which gives the audience a clear positioning prompt and guides the audience to read clearly according to the information level. Column refers to the use of grid cells to summarize elements when there are many chapters and titles or pictures in the directory page, which is helpful to form a clear and coherent information relationship and an easy-to-understand page and endow the design with an internal cohesion. The use of partitions and columns enhances the recognition of directory pages and the overall sense of layout.

(3) The relationship between black, white and gray should be clear in the picture book catalogue.

Among the layout elements, the picture is the work provided by the photographer to the layout designer, and it is usually an unchangeable element. Therefore, in the layout with pictures, we should first analyze the lightness relationship of pictures, and then determine the lightness relationship of other layout elements in the layout, so as to complete the overall black, white and gray layout of the layout. The plaintext information in the catalogue includes title, subtitle, quotation and page number. The brightness relationship of the title area can be expressed by font, size, thickness and color. Citation area can express gray level through different choices of font size, font type, word spacing and line spacing, and page number can also express its identifiability through font size and color. By adjusting these variable elements, we can enhance the visual sense of space in the layout, highlight the style of the album and the identifiability of the catalog pages, and create the aesthetic feeling and sense of space on the publishing side.

(4) The catalogue of picture books should be boldly left blank.

Blank layout is an effective means to make layout have vitality. Boldly leaving blank space is the embodiment of the layout design consciousness of modern album catalogue. Proper and reasonable blank space can break the rigid and dull routine, make the layout transparent, cheerful, jumping and fresh, and give readers a light and pleasant feeling in visual psychology. Bold blank space in layout design can create an orderly, reasonable and comfortable reading space for readers visually.

(5) Strengthen the overall layout of the picture book catalogue.

Generally speaking, the catalog design is to arrange the pictures and words of the catalog page reasonably, and to design the whole structure, font, color and so on. In addition, it should be noted that the design style of the whole catalogue is consistent with the style of the inner pages of the album. By strengthening the overall layout of the directory page, better visual effects can be obtained.