Because All of Us Design…
3½ simple ways for non-designers to quickly improve their chops.
Not all of us are designers. But all of us design.
Whether it’s a flyer about the upcoming neighborhood BBQ or an out-of-order sign on the restroom door, at some point or another, we all find ourselves needing to communicate something important to someone.
After spending a lot of years noticing bad design, I’ve narrowed down a list of 3½ very tactical things that will help even the most visually challenged of us up our game. Let’s get started…
Deciding What’s Important
Whether you’re using Publisher or that pirated version of Photoshop your son-in-law gave you, your first step is to make a quick list of everything you want to communicate.
Let’s pretend that we’re hosting an event and want to design a flyer for it. We would probably want to include things like:
- Name of the event
- Date
- Time
- Location
- Description
- Cost
Each of these elements must be given a place in the visual hierarchy. In other words, pretend that each element has a volume knob attached to it, and we’ve got to decide what element should be the loudest, the quietest, and everything in between. And here’s the deal…
When you turn everything up to 11, you’ve effectively made nothing important and everything irrelevant.
Font Choices
You’re going to hate me for this—but for the love of your own reputation:
Put Papyrus down… and Comic Sans too.
Look, I get it. Your computer came pre-loaded with a bunch of fancy fonts, but I promise that it just isn’t worth it. If you’ll do your very best to stick with solid, tried-and-true fonts like Helvetica, Avenir and Garamond, you’ll be way more likely to create a simple, digestible piece.
Note 1
On using bold, italics, underline and caps: If everything is bold (or italic, or underline or caps), then nothing is important. Once you’ve finished your piece, go back and force yourself to “un” some of these. This goes back to that hierarchy thing.
Note 2
On drop shadows and font effects: For the sake of this conversation, let’s just leave out all text effects—especially bevel and emboss. If you need a drop shadow to help with readability, that’s fine. Just remember to make it way less noticeable than you think you should.
Grouping
Most parts of your design will belong to one informational grouping or another, so be sure to organize them as such. For example, in the cellphone advertisement below (ignore that it’s an iPhone with an Android operating system), groupings include:
- The logo/company name
- Phone name/price/features of the phone
- The iconic call outs
Spacing
This one only counts as ½ a tip. You’ll notice that each group is given some really nice spacing from the edges and all the other groups in the design. So before you hit print, go back through your piece and give everything some room to breathe.
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that one of the biggest goals of design is to communicate a message simply and clearly. You aren’t trying to win a trophy, so relax and allow the design to get out of the way.
If you enjoyed this, I’d love for you to follow me and the rest of Dave Ramsey’s Creative Team on our collection: Articulate Hope.
