When a serializer persists the persistable state of a design mode document, it often adds code to the initialization method of components to persist values of properties that have been set at design time. This happens by default for most basic types, if no attribute has been set to direct other behavior.
With the DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute, you can indicate whether the value for a property is Visible, and should be persisted in initialization code, Hidden, and should not be persisted in initialization code, or consists of Content, which should have initialization code generated for each public, not hidden property of the object assigned to the property.
Members that do not have a DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute will be treated as though they have a DesignerSerializationVisibilityAttribute with a value of Visible. The values of a property marked as Visible will be serialized, if possible, by a serializer for the type. To specify custom serialization for a particular type or property, use the DesignerSerializerAttribute.
For more information, see Attributes Overview and Extending Metadata Using Attributes.