My designs were crap.

But with C.R.A.P., my designs are good enough to present the content I want to get across without distracting people. It helps the reader find the key points and grasp the structure at a glance.

It's a simple recipe you can follow to make your design good.

CRAP stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. These are 4 principles you can look out for and quickly change to improve your design.

This essay is an example of using these principles to improve your design.

Let's go in reverse order!

1. Proximity is about grouping elements together.

For example, this paragraph and the subheading have less space at the top than the subheading that follows. That's one reason why you should add a little more margin to the top of the subheading than to the bottom.

2. Alignment is about aligning groping aspects.

After you've grouped the elements, you need to communicate how these groups are connected.

For example, if you group the main heading and the main text into two groups, you can separate these groups by a large distance.

3. Repetition means using the same design in different places.

It's important to show consistency.

When you use the same design aspect in different groups or elements, you reinforce the sense of consistency. For example, in this essay, the subheading design is repeated in every instance.

It begins with a number, the keyword, and one-line text.

4. Contrast is about using a lot of contrast to see the different parts.

You should make the difference significant enough to see quickly if you want to highlight something.

The heading is the largest part of the text, then the lead heading, then the subheadings, and the paragraphs. There's a structure to the size of the text, and the size is big enough for you to see.

If the contrast isn't big enough, it'll be perceived as an error.

Reference:

Williams, Robin: Non-Designer's Design Book, The 4th Edition, 2014