“May the 4th be with you.” What started as pun warmly shared by
fans has become a full-fledged Star Wars holiday: Star Wars Day,
a special once-a-year celebration of the galaxy far, far away.

http://www.starwars.com/may-the-4th

So many designers are huge geeks!

But why? Lets have a look at a few design principles used by Star Wars that help make it so epic!

First things first. Depth.

Creating a sense of spacing between the foreground, middle ground and background achieves depth.

Star Wars uses depth to ensure you don’t lose focus on what is currently taking place by placing the important focal elements in the foreground, overlapping elements on different planes to create layers and changing the colour intensity of elements to appear either closer or further in the distance.

What next, Contrast.

Star Wars utilises contrast by placing opposing elements side by side, this creates a more dramatic mood. By placing larger elements next to smaller elements star wars is able to enforce a sense of dominance over the smaller element, this also makes the smaller element less significant but may actually work to draw more attention toward it.

All designers love our Negative Space!

Negative space creates drama and tension, Star Wars uses it to provide not only that but a visual pause between elements. Allowing breathing room around the main element brings your attention back to the focal objects, it creates visual drama by having more negative space.

SYMMETRY!

Star Wars creates balance with their symmetry and uses it to highlight their focal object. They use major elements on each side of the composition so that no balance is lost and place the focal point in the middle, this creates perfect symmetry.

Directional Cues.

Star Wars uses direction cues to assist the eyes navigation through visual elements and toward the focal point. This is used by placing the objects in the direction you want the viewers eyes to go, kind of like drawing an arrow toward it.

Finally we have repetition, repetition, repetition.

Repetition puts emphasis on an idea by using repeated visual elements creating unity betweens objects and providing a sense of strength. You can repeat elements by using patterns, lines or colours but if we use the Storm Troopers as an example we can see how placing elements in close proximity to one another it makes it appear as through they are strong within their group.

I am sure there are many more incredible design features of Star Wars but thats all I have for now!

May the 4th be with you.