15 Graphic Design Tips All Non-Designers Need to Know

So, you now want to try your hand in graphic designing? Great thought! You just have to understand that you need not be a trained graphic designer to do basic or fairly expert level design work. After you start designing, and continue with it, you will become a pro.

However, for now, let us give few pieces of advice that will help you meet some basic graphic design requirements. If you keep these factors in mind, we can guarantee that your design work will never ever look like coming from someone who is not a pro in the design business.

Tip 1: Legibility — No Compromise With It At All

If you think that you can compromise with legibility for the sake of design and look, you are wrong. Horribly wrong!! No matter how you plan the graphic work, you must make sure that the image or the texts must be readable. It must not demand any additional effort on part of the viewer to understand the content of the design/artwork. That’s basic. That’s a must.

Tip 2: Careful about Use of Fonts

When you use texts in an image or any graphic work, you use them for headings or titles, subtitles and body texts. Though you do not have to use the same font for all these in an image, you should also understand that multiple typefaces are not very easily acceptable to human eyes. It is, therefore, advised that you should stick to a single font family.

Tip 3: Proportionate Emphasis of Colors

You have to be careful about use of colors. No, we are not talking about choice of colors. We are talking about use of colors. You have to understand that the image or the graphic work you develop will be enlarged, depending on how it will be used. If you do not use colors in the correct proportion, the enlarged version of your graphic design will not look good. So, be careful about the proportion of color you use in your design work.

Tip 4: Space for Each Element

There may be a number of elements you have to include in your design work. One or some may be priority. However, that does not mean that you can ignore any element. You must respect the space of all the elements in your design. While you take care of alignment, you also see to the space between words. You should not reduce letter spacing too much; it will be hard to read words in that case. Again, you must not increase letter spacing too much, as it will detach the words from each another.

You also have to make sure that words and images or icons in your graphic work should not overpower each other. Each of the elements must have their own space and complement each other.

Tip 5: Careful Coloring

You have to be very careful when it comes to use of colors in the design you develop. No matter if you are working on darker shades or brighter shades, choose 2–3 primary colors and 2–3 secondary colors. While choosing colors you have to make sure that they complement each other with the right extent of match or contrast. If the typefaces are fine against a colored background, they have to be strong and distinctive.

Tip 6: Keep it Clean

It’s not that you have to restrict the use of colors. Though we advise you to use 2–3 primary colors and 2–3 secondary colors, you can also try other colors, depending on your sense of artistry. However, the graphic design or the logo design you work on must be clean and crisp. Set the contrast in a way that the text is clearly visible, and not hazy or lost in the background. Maintain uniformity while you use color.

Tip 7: The Font-Feeling

As an artist you must understand the relation among senses. Fonts can be associated with feelings. So, when you choose fonts for a particular text, try to choose the font that can be associated with the feeling that they text means to convey. The mood of the content can be various. It can be happy, sad, exclamatory, etc. Besides, the type of idea that the content conveys is also to be kept in mind. You should consider if the idea in the text is contemporary or traditional or revolutionary, etc. Choose fonts accordingly.

Tip 8: The Color-Connection

Like fonts, colors can also be associated with the mood that the text reflects. The theme of the design or artwork should be reflected by your choice of colors. You can reflect the emotions or moods through complementing, matching or contrasting colors. Use of bold r bright or light colors also paints the feel that the text or the theme carries.

Tip 9: Maintain Order

No matter how creative and random you mean your design work to be, it is essential to main an order. When you use text in the logo, not matter if it is a completely text based logo or icon based, there should be a proper alignment. The alignment should not necessarily be the symmetrical one. It just has to be in an order. Alignment is specially more important in case you are working on web or app banners, or on images for social media platforms. The visibility and legibility of the texts in the images or banners are essentially significant in those cases.

Tip 10: Originality

There is nothing better than being genuine. Avoid copying styles. If you come across some design that you like and think that will impress others, find out what in that design is so likeable. Try that factor in the image or design or logo that you create. However, make sure to maintain originality.

Tip 11: Maintain a Stock

We have advised you to keep your work as original as you can. However, we also suggest that you should have a stock of the impressive and attractive logos and various types of designs that you find. You may not use them exactly as it is. But, you can definitely be inspired by the factors that make those logos or designs attractive. If there is a time when you go through your creative limbo, when you cannot thing something creative or when you cannot live up to your creative self, use these inspirations. It is always better to stay armed. So, keep your arsenal well stocked.

Tip 12: Resist the Temptation

This is regarding your font selection for logos or any other design works. Sometimes, you have a typical weakness for a particular font or a few specific fonts. You tend to use them the moment you get a chance. Even though you think that this font is not going to match the theme of the design, you still get carried away and use the same font. Resist this temptation. As a graphic designer you have all right to be creative and exercise your own preferences. However, you should also understand that you have to avoid bias for the sake of art.

Tip 13: Dare to Leave Blank Space

Do not worry about leaving blank space. Sometimes you create an image, especially for the purpose of product promotion, where you have to put the product icons or images at the centre. Now, to go by the traditional ways of designing, you cannot leave blank space. We would suggest you to leave blank space in the image, if you feel it is necessary. You can actually create an image without border and a background color. However, you cannot do it at random. You have to use your artistic discretion and decide where to leave blank space and where not.

Tip 14: Use Meaningful Line Breaks for Texts

Line breaks for the texts in designs or images are very important. First of all, the meaning of the text depends on the line break. If you mess with the line breaks, the meaning of the text may entirely change. So, before you use line breaks, understand the text first.

If you are using line breaks, you can use different tones of the same color for the fonts, in keeping with the meaning of the line. Again, you can also use finer or bolder typefaces of the same font for the lines as they follow. It is totally up to the meaning of the text and how you are going to that mood of the text in your design or image.

Tip 15: Plan You Design

This advice should be the first. We mention this at last so that this is the first thing you remember if you are going to start working on a design right away.

develop a plan for the design work you are going to start. Understand the requirement. Try to comprehend what the image may include and what message it is supposed to convey. If you are working on a logo of a company, you have to figure out how and where you are going to use the tagline, if there is any. After you have planned it, go ahead with the design work. Of course, you can do try and error during the design work. It is not necessary to stick to the plan strictly. But, it is necessary to have a plan.

So, Get Started:

Now that you have known about the basics of graphic designing, you are good to go. Try to follow the tips that you have just got. While you follow these pieces of guidance, and keep designing, you learn more and more by yourself. That’s the way you become a pro designer. Get started, then. Good luck.

Description:

Are you a beginner in graphic designing? Wondering how to create great logos and various other designs? Designhill has the right pieces of advice for you. Take a quick look.

15 Graphic Design Tips All Non-Designers Need to Know was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.