Last updated on October 5th, 2021
Texture refers to the feeling a viewer gets when seeing a design. Amongst all the graphic design elements such as color and typography, the designers lay extra emphasis on textures. What distinguishes texture from other design elements is that you can feel texture. For instance, everyone can feel and weigh paper. So, a designer will select thick paper for business card for the reason that such paper looks more professional. A thin paper may appear to be cheap but may be an ideal choice for designing a promotional piece to give a feel of grassroots campaign.
Besides paper, varied materials including metal, glass and plastic are strategically put to use by the graphic designers to get the desired impact on the audiences. Each material has its own texture and the designers explore unique texture of different materials as a means of conveying a business message. Consumers generally form their opinion about a product just after glancing at packaging material and getting its feel and weight.
However, clever designers can create feel and weight of the materials without actually using them. They bring about the feel of texture on a screen or page by using different graphic elements along with illustration, fine art and photography. Design software such as Photoshop allow for experimenting with the visual texture and layers of text, lines and shapes to create feeling of texture.