Yes I Think Your Document Is Ugly
While I don’t want to say my mom is a liar, she is one. People do judge a book by it’s cover. What we see influences not only how we feel about something but also how much we trust it.
That mean, no matter who you are sending it to, the visual appearance of your work is judged every time it is shared. The investor deck you sent over this morning. The email you sent to a cold lead last night. The spec doc you shared this week with your team. How it looked impacted their perception of the information and of you. Whether they intended it to or not.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m a designer. It’s easy for me to make things look good. I’m one of those artistic types. It just comes naturally for me.
Actually, not really. I didn’t go to art school. My handwriting is terrible. I have a hard time distinguishing colors. I can’t draw. I don’t dress like a hipster. Whew, I feel better now…
I worked hard to become a visual designer. And honestly, I don’t think I’m great at it. I’m pretty good. But there are tons of people out there who are better. But I get by. My secret? I picked up a few tricks along the way that make my work look significantly better. And they are so easy, you can make any word document or presentation that you create look better too. Too bad I need to stay employable, so I’m not going to share them with you.
Okay fine. You convinced me. Just because I’m tired of all the ugly documents you send me.
6 Ways to Improve the Way Your Work Looks
1) Don’t Use Full Black
Here’s the simplest change you can make to any work you do that involves words — so everything. Don’t use the default, full black color (#000000) for text. (By the way, the hashtag is called a hex color value. It is just a numerical value for an exact color.) Instead use something slightly lighter than full black. It will make your document easier to read because it is softer. And since it inherently will be different from everyone else’s default, it will make your work stand out. I know it seems silly, but it makes a HUGE difference. Here are some off-black colors you can start using right now:
- #333333
- #34373B
- #333F4D
- #474747
2) White Space is Your Friend
We all could use a little help from our friends. And white space is one that I lean on all the time.
What I mean by white space is the negative space around something. White space gives things room to breath! No one likes feeling claustrophobic, so make sure you put enough space between items. It’s subtle, but it makes a big difference. Let me show you:
3) Use Plenty of Line Spacing
Line spacing, or line height, is the distance between lines of text. If you use the right amount of it, the more readable your content is, and the less cluttered it feels. I typically stick to the 1.25 to 1.5 range for line height, but even on this article you’re reading right now, Medium is using about 1.6. Just like white space, line spacing makes your information feel more cohesive and less scrunched together.
4) Align. Align. Align.
Alignment is an essential element to create unity, intentionality, and “zen” in your work. Ommmmmmmmm. Sorry I had to take a short meditation break. When items in a group are misaligned, it makes things feel out of place and ultimately hard for your eyes to follow. For example, don’t center align one item when the others are left aligned and vice versa.
On the topic of alignment, also please don’t center any long-form pieces of text on a page. Instead, left align them like your favorite blog or news outlet does. When text is centered, your eyes have to jump all over the place trying to find the start of the next line. It gets annoying and actually takes you longer to go through the content if your eyes don’t have a consistent place to go.
I was going to make the text on the whole rest of the article center aligned so you could suffer through it, but Medium doesn’t even let you do that. Well played Medium. Well played.
5) Don’t pick Arial. Or Times New Roman.
This isn’t the 90s. System default fonts are very functional and of course, free. But so are other, more modern fonts out there. And they are vastly underutilized by people who aren’t nerdy designers. Using a solid font — that isn’t being used by any of your other coworkers — will add that extra bit of polish to your work.
So where do you shop for new fonts? I highly recommend just using Google Fonts. They are easy to start using and completely free. As an added bonus, here are some of the go-to fonts that I use all the time:
And just in case you need help installing a Google Font on your computer, here’s a video on how to install it on your Macbook. And how to install it on Windows.
I do have to put in a disclaimer that fonts can be trickier depending on the file type you share. For example, if you share a document in Microsoft Word and they don’t have the same font you used installed, Microsoft Word will just default to another font. So you might lose some of the benefits there. However, you can usually share things as a PDF in order to make sure the right font is displayed. Also, if you use Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc., you won’t have any issue!
6) Contrast is a designer’s secret weapon
Last but most definitely not least. Contrast is one of the most important aspects of visual design. Contrast is what creates balance — the yin and yang of the design world. It is used to (1) draw attention — our eyes are naturally drawn to things that are different. And (2) it varies what we are looking at so it’s not so all the same boring thing over and over again.
The cool thing is I bet you already use contrast all the time. Things like bolding important text or using larger font-sizes for headers or titles. My advice is to use contrast to an even higher degree.
When you make the font-size on a header larger than the normal, body text, make it much, much larger. For example, if the body text is 16pt, try making the largest header 20–24pt. Utilizing the default header styles in most programs are a good starting point.
And don’t just bold items — try using ALL CAPS text. I do it all the time for section headers or labels. However, if you don’t want to make it seem like you are yelling at someone, you can tone down ALL CAPS text by using a smaller font-size and/or changing its color to grey. For example:
Why so much about words!?!
You might be wondering why all 6 tips — while relevant to other things too — are mostly about the visual appearance of words. The main reason is that words make up the core of every piece of work that we produce. Whether that is a presentation at a team meeting, an industry report, an e-commerce website, or a mobile app. They are not to be taken lightly! So make sure they take a shower, brush their teeth, and look presentable. Because you’ll be judged by the way they look. I guarantee it.
Any other tricks you use that you think are worth sharing? Questions on ways to use the ones listed above? Feel free to leave any comments, and I’ll get back to you!
