12 Graphic Design Tips For Non-Designers

Graphic design is a talent, but you don’t have to spend years in school to learn the skills that you need to make awesome designs. As entrepreneurship becomes more prevalent, more and more people find themselves in situations where they need to create beautiful and eye-catching designs. No matter your level of design skills, creating outstanding content for your brand is important. Here are 12 design tips for anyone looking to step up their visual work and learn some basic principles of design.

1. Take a look at the latest design trends

Start your projects off by doing a quick search online for the latest design trends in your field. This will help you get a feel for what’s popular and provide some general inspiration for your design.

2. Check out projects that are similar to yours and use them to evoke new ideas

After you’ve checked out the latest design trends, research projects that are similar to the project you want to create. View other projects can help you gain an understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

3. Keep your design clean and crisp

Focus on keeping your designs neat and tidy. Many people tend to want to scatter the elements of their design all around the page. Randomly scattered items are a distraction that makes it difficult to focus on the important information that you’re trying to convey.

4. Choose colors that work well together

You don’t need to be a color theorist, but you should learn some of the basics of how colors work together. Read: An Introduction To Graphic Design: The Psychology of Color if you need an overview of color theory.

5. Use a grid system to layout your photos and other elements

Remember how we just talked about the importance of not scattering elements all over the page? Using a grid system is the way to keep everything nice and neat. Most design apps whether they be desktop applications like Photoshop or web-based applications like Canva have a built-in grid and alignment system. You don’t have to guess if those pictures are lined up perfectly. Let the computer do that for you.

6. Limit the number of fonts you use on your projects

In general, you shouldn’t be using more than two fonts in your project. You want one font for your titles, subtitles, and headers and you’ll use a contrasting font for your general text. Read: An Introduction To Graphic Design – Typography: Typeface Pairing to learn more about font and typeface pairing.

7. Use font decorations to add more emphasis to important words or sections

Instead of using several different fonts in your design, try using the Bold or Italic properties to show differences and display different levels of importance.

8. Work with fonts from the same family to keep your design consistent

Keeping in line with the theme of fonts, let’s talk about the importance of keeping constancy throughout your font choices. Keeping your fonts in the same family help you keep your overall design flowing well and easy to understand.

9. Create contrast in your design

Opposites attract. Therefore you should use opposite but complimentary colors in your design. Don’t use clashing colors, but rather colors that appear on opposite ends of the color spectrum.

10. Experiment with symmetry and placement

How your design is laid out is a huge part of the overall design presentation. Use symmetry to make sure that all of your elements are balanced. Remember asymmetry is also symmetry. The key is making sure that your design elements balance well throughout your design.

11. Use scale and size to emphasize hierarchy and importance

Have you ever noticed that your eyes are immediately drawn to the largest elements on a page? Place the most important information in a big bold font to show viewers what they should focus on most. Then use subsequently smaller sizes for the less important information.

12. Don’t crowd all of the elements of your project in one area

No one likes clutter. Use the tip on symmetry to make sure your design elements are distributed evenly accrues your project. Don’t have a ton of things on the left side of the page and only one small element on the right side. Keep things as balanced as possible.