Graphic design basics for everyday people

Maybe your job requires you to make powerpoints, nice looking word documents, signs to tell people the copier is broken, or even basic webpages. Maybe you’re an aspiring designer. Whoever you are, I can assure you, there are many more like you — people who could benefit from some standard graphic design principles but who aren’t designers themselves.

I’ve worked with a lot of people like this, especially when I was the only graphic designer at a nonprofit with more than 100 people. There are a lot of people on the internet ridiculing bad design, but I haven’t found a lot of heartfelt advice. So, here are some basic principles to take along with you the next time you sit down to make something well-designed and useful. No judgement and none of the hard programs — just some tips to help your everyday documents not suck.

Start by listening. Design for someone.

What is the problem you are trying to solve? What is the ideal outcome of your product? Before you start to fix up a your document, ensure that you understand the pain points of your audience, what you are trying to communicate, and the action you aim to insight. Design for the real, fallible humans all around you. Talk with them, listen to their challenges, and use that as a starting point. If you don’t know your audience personally, create an archetype and consider the needs and pain points of your fictional character. Design with someone in mind, besides yourself.

Form follows function.

Don’t design for design’s sake. A lot of what people call design is actually decoration. Go a step further. Design isn’t about making something look better; it’s about making it work better. Design should make information useful. Design for a reason. Depending on your audience, your need, and your ideal outcome, the best design may be a simple list of bullet points in basic Helvetica in a black and white Google doc. No one wants to be overdressed at a party.

Simplify. Less is more.

Good designers pay close attention to the content and the story and cut when possible. Good designers are editors, curators, clippers, and refiners. Strip away slowly until only the most essential elements are left. Be brutal.

Size, color, and proximity are tools.

These are a designer’s tools to create meaning in communication, or to show patterns and relationships. Yet, people often use them arbitrarily or as decoration. “Eh, I think I’ll make this header 18 point font because it’s shorter, so there’s more room on this page…” The relationship between words on a page — the ratio of their size and boldness to one another, their placement, their color … it all creates meaning. Use these tools to tell a purposeful and thoughtful story. Be consistent from page to page, slide to slide.

Mind the color wheel.

Colors that are next to one another on the color wheel (ie: blue and green) create a calm feeling; they are usually color combinations found in nature. Colors opposite one another (ie: purple and yellow) can be alarming and attention grabbing. Color dictates meaning — red ink usually means something is bad, purple has a laid back and even playful vibe. Don’t play roulette with with your palette.

Create layers.

Not everything can be the most important thing. Layer your messages into headlines, content, supporting content, and minor footnotes/other messages, and translate that hierarchy into design layers. You can make text a lighter color or smaller to literally make it “fall to the back” as the eye perceives it; you can make text bold and big to ensure it’s the first thing someone sees.

Use grids.

Don’t randomly decide where to place elements on a page. Even Microsoft products give you grid options. Use them. It will help you move text boxes, images, and other elements around without having to guess.

Treat type nicely.

You know that moment when you walk up to an elevator and it’s just a little too full for you to push your way on without being an asshole, so you pass and say you’ll get the next one? Do the same thing when all the words you are trying to fit on a given slide/page/webpage don’t fit. Don’t fuss with margins and spacing and font size. Cut type instead of crowding it. Or, allow it to wait for the next elevator by putting it on the second page.

Don’t use silly fonts.

Comic sans, Papyrus, Zapfino, Lobster, Curlz, Brush Script, Gil Sans. You know who you are. Stick with something that won’t make you look foolish: Helvetica, Open Sans, PT Serif, Lato, or really anything in the Google suite will do.

Test your designs.

Constantly put your designs in front of new people for critical feedback. Ask them smart questions, like, “How does this make you feel?” and “When you glance at this briefly, what is the information you’ll take away?” If it’s a webpage, let them click around without guiding them and watch to see if they are following your desired user path, and where they get confused. Seeking out a close friend (or your mom) and asking, “What do you think?” doesn’t count. Go digging for tough feedback, and use it to get better.

Don’t design in fantasy.

When you sit down to design a poster, don’t guess at the common print dimensions. Don’t design the handout to be in color when it will probably be photocopied in black and white. Don’t make the video widescreen unless you are sure it’ll be shown on one. Don’t leave room in your design for a great photo if you don’t have one handy. Design with reality — and the end — in mind.

Give elements room to breathe.

You can even leave entire swaths of your design blank. In fact, try taking the content that you are trying to cram into a given space and reduce it by half. Designers call this meaningful empty space “white space”. You can call it whatever you want. Also, not to get up in your business, but you should strive for white space in your life too — in your closets, on your shelves, on your desk, and in your mind. Mmmmm zen.

Collect good designs.

When you see something you admire, save it for reference. (For fun, you can test what you’ve learned here by looking for layers, white space, color use, and invisible evidence of a grid.) Incredible design is all around us and is improving all the time. Savor it, appreciate it, be grateful for it, model after it, and learn from it.

I put these items into an 11x14 poster that you can print for your cubicle if you want. No pressure or anything, it’s just that sometimes I read stuff on the internet and I forget so I thought it would be handy.

Thank you to my dad, an artist and printmaker. I called him in a panic when I finagled my first graphic design job before I had any formal training, and he gave me most of this advice in one way or another.