Did you know that Marissa Mayer was Googles 20th employee? It is said that she helped introduce more than 100 products while at Google and she also oversaw the launch of many famous Google products like Gmail and Maps.
In 2012 she was introduced as a yahoos new CEO and served this position for five years until 2017. With her at the helm at the time Yahoo! stock price grew more than 250% from $15 to $53.
OK so she's smart she worked for some great companies and has some things to show for it but what about this five point design rule? Let's check it out.
The five point design rule is a very simple concept and it's related to not using too many different fonts, colors or font sizes on one page or one design. At her time with Yahoo, she would tell designers to count points for every different font or phone size or color on a page or design. If this number was larger than five then the design had to be reworked.
This is indeed a great concept that focuses on keeping things simple and readable.
Let's say you're using a special font for the headings on your page that's one point. The body of the page or paragraphs will use different font size. That's another point. One would probably use a different font or font size for the menu as well so that's three points so far. How about the background of the page or the logo. The background is white and your logo is blue. We wouldn't count the white color but the logo does have to be counted so that's already four points. Even if the logo is not a specific color but it is just black, it will still have a different size or maybe font size as compared to the titles or paragraph text.
Can you notice how quickly we are coming to the five points rule? We haven't customize much except for the headings, the paragraphs, the menu and the logo and we are already up to four points.
With just one point left to go to the five rule, we don't have much leeway in customizing let's say the footer or the sidebar.
Even though this might sound silly or restrictive it is indeed a great rule that many of us designers should follow. Keep your designs clean and without unnecessary distractions. Use consistent font types and font size throughout your designs.
Lastly let's briefly talk about colors. Basically don't use too many of them. A good rule of thumb is to pick a color and then use different shades of it also called monochromatic.
Go ahead and count points based on these rules for your older designs. Let us know in the comments below how your design score on this scale.