Graphic Design Tips for Non-Designers

Have you ever had to make designs – albeit you aren’t a trained graphic designer?

Social media pros often design the creative elements that accompany organic posts and paid ads.

SEOs might design banner ads and call-outs.

Content marketers design featured images and might even whomp up their own infographics.

Entrepreneurs and business owners could be designing their entire website, etc.

Graphic design may be a useful skill for any digital marketer to possess in their back pocket.

And it’s possible to make professional-looking designs albeit you've got no graphic design training.

How?

Here are seven tips to assist you, the non-designer, create compelling designs.

Embrace White Space

When creating a design, the graphics and text tend to urge all the eye .

The areas without graphics and text are even as important, and allowing room for your design to breathe is one among the factors that separates amateurish designs from professional ones.

White space (a.k.a., negative space) is that the area between and around design elements, and it’s not necessarily white (it are often any color, pattern, or maybe an image).   

The simple rule of thumb is this:

Don’t overcrowd your elements.

Stick with Two Easy-to-Read Fonts

When it involves choosing fonts, the foremost important thing to specialise in is readability.

A gorgeous font that's really hard to read does a disservice to your design.

Always choose crystal clear fonts.

In addition, attempt to stick with two fonts.

More than that makes chaos; too many fonts will find yourself making your design difficult to read and make it appear as if it had been created by an amateur.

If you select two fonts, you'll use one for headings and therefore the other for the body text.

Choose a font that aligns together with your brand tone/voice.

For example, the font that a fashion boutique might use in their digital marketing is perhaps vastly different than what a tech company might choose.

No matter what font you select , you'll adjust the kerning, tracking, and resulting in allow you more malleability together with your designs.

Always Pay Close Attention to Alignment

Another thing that separates professional-looking designs from amateur ones?

Alignment.

When you’re aligning design elements, never eyeball and guess.

Most design programs will show lines that permit you recognize when your text boxes or graphics are in alignment, otherwise you can toggle grid lines on to ascertain for yourself.

If your program doesn’t have an choice to use grid lines, you'll still add one.

Upload a vector image of a grid and send it to the rear of your design.

Then, when everything’s in alignment, delete the grid.

Consider the Psychological Impact of colours

When creating your brand’s color palette, it’s important that they reflect your brand’s tone.

Psychologically, colors evoke different feelings:

• Blue: trust, safety, security and relaxation.
• Purple: creativity, abundance, and mystery.
• Green: wealth, health, and refreshment.
• Pink: femininity, romance, and youth.
• Orange: energy and enthusiasm.
• Yellow: optimism, spontaneity.
• Red: passion and energy.
• Black: sophistication, luxury, and power.
• White: purity and cleanliness.
• Grey: gravity and professionalism.

It’s important to stay the emotions that your brand’s color palette evokes in mind when creating designs.

Take the colour blue for instance .

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Given that it’s the colour of trust and security, it’s no wonder that financial brands like Chase, PayPal, Venmo, and Visa all use blue as their main color.

Think about what you would like your brand’s colors to signal to your customers.

You can use color psychology in everything from your brand logo to your website design.

Create a Color Palette

In addition to brooding about the psychology of color, you've got to believe how colors interact with one another to make an overall palette for your website and styles .

Adobe’s color circle may be a super useful gizmo that helps you easily create a color palette.

Here, I took a bright green and created five adjustable color palettes using the free tool.

Analogous Color Palette

This color palette makes use of colours next to the bottom color on the colour wheel to make a monochromatic look.

Complementary Color Palette

A complementary palette uses your base color and therefore the exact opposite of that color to make contrast.

Use one because the dominant and therefore the other because the accent.

Triad Color Palette

A triad color palette pulls three colors evenly spaced on the colour wheel.

Monochromatic Color Palette

All the colours during this palette are a shade, tone, or tint of the most color.

Compound Color Palette

A compound color palette incorporates the 2 hues that are adjacent to the most color, without an excessive amount of contrast.

Mind Facebook’s Limitations on Text in Ad Images

If the graphic you’re creating is for a Facebook ad, you’ll want to be mindful of Facebook’s 20 percent text rule for ads within the news feed.

As the name suggests, any ad photo must not exceed 20 percent text.

If you’re designing a picture for a billboard , keep this rule out mind from the beginning – it’ll prevent a headache later.

Before uploading it to your ad, you'll even run it through Facebook’s Image Text Check tool to form sure it'll pass.

Make Sure there’s a Visual Component to Your Brand Style Guide

Establishing a brand style guide is extremely important, as it ensures everyone is on the same page (no pun intended) and creating designs that are aesthetically consistent.

The visual portion of a style guide should include things like:

Conclusion

It doesn’t take a professional to create a professional-looking design.

Use these design tips for non-designers to influence your creations, and no one ever has to know you’re self-taught!

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