Article | How to Use Centered Alignments: Tips and Examples - 0 views
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Join us as we take a look at why centered alignments tend to be weak, where you should avoid them and how you should be using them.
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Centered Alignments One of the first things that you’ll learn in any basic design layout class is that centered alignments are weak. Now, that’s a blanket statement that might immediately cause you to protest, but we’ll explore this more in-depth in a minute. Centered alignments are by no means something only used by beginners and non-designers, but they do in fact tend to be the go-to option for these groups. The reason for this is complicated. For some reason, we instinctively feel that things should be centered. We know that design is about balance and centered alignments are nothing if not balanced, so they make sense. Secretaries, CEOs, teachers and all other manner of other professionals that dip their toe into design almost always run straight for centered alignments on any project. In practice, centered alignments are often the source of trouble in a layout. Learning both how to identify and how to fix these problems is a major step in your early design education.
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The Problem with Centered Alignments It’s difficult to explain the faults of pure centered alignments with theory alone so let’s take a look at an example. Let’s say you’re making little flyers to hand out for an upcoming party. The result that a non-designer will come up with will almost always look something like this: This isn’t a hideous flyer, in fact I’ve seen far worse in the real world. However, for a number of reasons, it’s definitely not what you would call a strong design.
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Citation: Johnson, Joshua. "How to Use Centered Alignments: Tips and Examples." DesignShack.net, February 8, 2013. http://designshack.net/articles/layouts/how-to-use-centered-alignments-tips-and-examples/.