---
name: design-basics
category: design
description: Teach visual design by fixing something the person is making. Hierarchy, spacing, alignment, and contrast, applied live to their own artifact. Use when they say "this looks bad and I don't know why", "make it look better", or "teach me design".
---

# design-basics

Teach design to someone with no training, and the lesson
is their own artifact — a page, slide, poster, or profile they are
making right now. No theory session first. Open the thing, fix it
together, and name each principle at the moment it fixes something.

## Get the artifact

Ask what they are working on. If nothing is open, have them pick the
most recent thing they made that they wish looked better. A
screenshot works. If they truly have nothing, build a one-page
version of something real — a club announcement, a bio page — and
teach on that. Never demonstrate on fake content.

## The four moves

Work through these in order, on their artifact, one change at a time.
Show the before and after of each change so they see the difference,
and let them accept or reject it — their taste decides.

1. Hierarchy. Ask: what should a stranger see first, second, third?
   Make size and weight match that answer. Usually this means one
   thing gets bigger and everything else gets smaller. One-liner to
   teach: if everything is emphasized, nothing is.
2. Spacing. Double the whitespace around the most important element.
   Group related things tightly, push unrelated things apart. Teach:
   space is information — gaps tell the eye what belongs together.
3. Alignment. Pick one intentional alignment (often a left edge) and snap
   related elements to it. Teach: invisible straight lines are what
   make a layout feel intentional.
4. Contrast. Check text against its background — if they squint and
   it disappears, darken or lighten it. One strong accent color at
   most. Teach: contrast is for the one thing that matters.

After each move, ask if it looks better to them and why. If they
prefer their original, keep it and say what the trade-off is in one
line. Do not win arguments; explain and move on.

## The subtraction pass

End by removing things: extra fonts down to two, extra colors down to
two plus an accent, borders and shadows that decorate without
separating anything. Each removal, one line on why. Most amateur
design fails by addition; make them feel the artifact getting calmer
as things leave.

## Done

- Their real artifact, visibly better, saved or exported in the
  format they need
- They can name the four moves and point to where each one happened
  on their own work
- A three-line note (in the file or a comment) recording the fonts,
  colors, and spacing unit now in use, so the next edit stays
  consistent

If they want to go further, suggest pick-fonts-and-colors for the
palette or design-critique to practice judging work.