“What is seen sells” is the case with a well-designed UI UX design. We would be lying if we said that we didn’t like a platform just because visually, the design looked minimalistic, provoked some emotion in us and also worked great in functionality.
2025 is a great year to get your hands dirty and learn how visual design plays an important role in a well-designed UX, thanks to the many trends coming through. Trends like morphism, brutalism, dark mode, and Augmented Reality (AR) make visual design a significant aspect of the UX.
What Role Does Visual Design Play in UX?
Visual design isn’t just about the aesthetics of the UI. If you think that designers just put some 3D layout here and some animations there, and the UI is done and dusted, we have some news for you: unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that. In fact, if done rightly, a well-designed visual design greatly enhances the product’s user experience; let’s see how:
- Boosts Usability
Techniques like typography, colour, spacing, and visual design can form a clear hierarchy. Hierarchy helps users consider what part of the content is most important, like a call to action, and what content can wait for their attention.
Visual design elements, such as buttons and icons, are created to reduce the viewers’ cognitive load so that they get the time and mental capacity to comprehend the content.
- Fosters Emotional Engagement
If you think that a brand and a business will work with mere prototyping and a well-designed UX, then you’re highly mistaken. It needs some emotional appeal to work. With UI, designers can weave emotions into the product they are designing, which guarantees the long-term loyalty of users.
Key Components of Visual Design: Every Brick of the Wall Matters
What makes an interface a win? Here are a few key components of visual design that need to be mastered to design an interface that’s worthwhile.
Typography
If you’re not a designer, you must be thinking: what’s more to typography than choosing a font? Let us enlighten you on what’s more to typography than just choosing the font and how it can be used to convey information so that it hits the right spot strategically.
- Different fonts stand for different moods. Designers match the font style with the messaging they want to convey to the target audience. For body texts, they usually choose clear and legible fonts, and for headings and logos, the font can be more decorative and playful.
For instance, in legal documents, classic fonts like Times New Roman provide a sense of formality, but children’s books ask for a more playful mood; Lobster font would work fine for that.
- Font size, weight, colour, and style can also create a page’s visual hierarchy, and users will find the content easy to skim through, which enhances readability.
For instance, when headings use big-sized fonts, it guides the viewer’s eye to the most important information first, and the secondary information can wait.
Colour Theory
What if we tell you colours have emotions? We’re not stupid to say that; read about colour psychology, and you will say so, too. Colours influence user choices and hold the capability to affect decision-making.
Colours in typography are a great way to show a spectrum of emotions, and a design needs to convey some emotion to appeal to the users so that it looks robotic.
- Red, for instance, is associated with excitement and energy, while blue conveys calmness and trust.
Websites like First Cry that sell children’s products use bright colours like orange, yellow, and green. These colours evoke emotions of joy and excitement.
On the other hand, websites like PayTm use colours like blue and white to convey trust, stability, and peace.
- Complementary colours lie on the opposite sides of the colour wheel, and when the design needs to pop and catch some attention, these colours are placed next to each other. The result creates a vibrant contrast that grabs attention.
For example, everybody’s favourite app, Instagram, which makes us hate our screen time, has a logo that is a mix of purple, red, and orange. These three colours are analogous, and analogous colours are next to each other on the colour wheel.
Instagram played it smart by placing these colours together because when placed together, they offer a harmonious and cohesive feel that’s soothing for the eyes. Hence, the app’s logo is aesthetically pleasing and creates a calming effect on the eyes.
- Colour schemes like complementary and triadic colours dictate how colours work while designing UI. Complementary colours are opposite on the colour wheel to create a vibrant contrast and help grab attention.
Triadic colours have equal space between them on the colour wheel; these three colours create a dynamic and bold composition when placed together, which brings amazing results for the final UI look.
Layout
When elements on the page are arranged in such a way that it creates a sense of balance, guides the eyes of the user about their visual journey, and makes it easy for them to navigate through the interface.
There are a few rules and practices associated with layout that designers follow to make it functional and aesthetically pleasing, some of which are:
- Rule of thirds: Form or imagine a 3×3 grid along the website’s page, and place the key elements of the design at the intersection or along the lines of the grid. This composition is eye-pleasing and is widely used by photographers and graphic designers to make their results look modern.
- White Space (Negative Space): This space is the empty area that’s clear around design elements. This takes the cognitive load off of the viewer’s eyes. Empty space takes a backseat and lets the content that matters on the website be the center of attention.
- Balance and Asymmetry: Don’t get us wrong, by symmetry, we don’t mean that it has to be perfectly symmetrical. Though symmetrical layouts look formal and elegant, asymmetrical layouts create a more dynamic and engaging design.
The design should have harmony when you look at it, regardless of whether it is symmetrical or asymmetrical.
- Proximity: Related elements should be grouped to clarify the users. It creates a sense of connection, and they can comprehend the information quickly.
Iconography
Icons are small pictures or symbols representing information common across cultures.
For instance, imagine you’re in a foreign country, you don’t speak their language, and they don’t speak yours. If you want to go to the loo, you know that there has to be a symbol (🚹🚺) on a door that indicates that it’s the washroom.
That’s what icons are used for, as a non-verbal language tool in UI to ensure the worldwide audience understands it.
We all know that the magnifying glass icon stands for the search symbol, and the dustbin icon stands for the delete option because now it’s a universal language.
Texture
In UI, texture refers to the surface quality of the object shown on the interface. The repeated pattern of vertical or horizontal lines can form texture. A plain rectangular shape has a smooth visual, but when diagonal lines are put into it, it shows a “grip” effect.
There are two types of textures: Tactile and implied textures. One can feel the texture in the former, but in the latter, one can only see the texture.
If you remember, the app icon designs in iOS 6 and earlier used to mimic the glossy texture of glass. It was an attention grabber, encouraging users to tap on the icons.
Later, Apple introduced the linen fabric texture and discontinued it when flat designs became popular.
Flat designs are a minimalist style that showcases clean spaces and two-dimensional illustrations. The use of texture has decreased over a decade as we moved to minimalist designs. However, texture can still be an important building block in the UI design.
What Does the Future Entail for Visual Design?
Design matters more than ever in 2025, thanks to technological developments in AR/VR, AI, and AI-generated responsive technologies. The awareness to make the design more accessible and inclusive also asks for improved visual design standards.
Data-driven designs produced with the help of analytics are all over the place as they come with proof that has worked out well for other businesses.
A designer should have their toolkit ready and have the essential skills to ace visual design. Essential tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, and upcoming AI-powered platforms should be combined with the soft skills of designers, such as collaboration, empathy, and understanding of user psychology.
Incorporate practical tips to make your design look like a pro, not a novice design. Create mock projects and seek user feedback for improvement, stay inspired by following design blogs, and engage in UX communities to keep the interest alive. Learn from successful UX design case studies, and you will be closer to creating a visual design that slaps.
FAQs
1. How does Visual Design differ from and complements UX Design?
UX design focuses on functionality and usability, keeping the user at the center of the design as it primarily focuses on user needs. The processes and methods used in UX are research, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing.
On the other hand, visual design centers on aesthetics, covering elements like typography, imagery and iconography. It applies design principles like contrast and balance.
Visual design complements UX design as it provokes emotional responses in users that build brand loyalty.
2. What are the upcoming trends in visual design for 2025?
Key trends in visual design include,
- Minimalist Design 2.0
- Micro-interactions
- Adaptive visuals
- Inclusive design,
- Customizable UI themes
- AI-assisted design
- Dark mode
All of these trends focus on user-centric and future-ready interfaces that bring business to stakeholders.
