Style choices that make visual design harder

If you decide to use these in your visual design, it might be harder to make something good.

On the other hand, if you use them well, your design might be more impressive.

• More elements that need to be laid out (the more elements, the harder it is to make their visual relationships clear)
• More elements to emphasise or de-emphasise in relation to each other (it’s hard to make many levels of emphasis distinct)
• A layout that is intentionally disorderly (our eyes crave order, so chaos is harder to produce well)
• Less visible structure to the layout (it takes more effort to make visual relationships clear without visual cues)
• Elements with a lot of variation in size and shape (layout is harder when you don’t have similar sizes and shapes)
• More layers on which elements sit (it’s harder to make it clear which layer each element sits on )
• More colours to make coherent (you run out of space on the colour wheel, and the colours all have to work together)
• More gradients (good gradients are hard to make, and their variety can be hard to pair with other elements)
• Depth effects on elements to make them look three-dimensional (it’s hard to make them feel realistic/natural)
• Shadow or lighting effects (it’s hard to make them feel realistic/natural)

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