Graphic Design Tips for Beginers

Whether you’re a creating graphics for social media or designing an invitation for an upcoming event, the application of graphic design is vast and versatile. From font pairing and scale, to alignment and white space, the facets of the design world are complex. Let these tips help you through the ups and the downs of the creative process.

Be clever with your colors

Choose a colour scheme that has 1-3 primary colors and additional 1-3 secondary colour that contrast and complement each other. Use different tones of the same colour for consistency by adjusting brightness for contrast. Finer typefaces will need stronger distinction against a colored background.

Limit your typefaces

When selecting a typeface or font for headings, subtitles and body text, use easy to read fonts for simple and effective graphic design. The eye finds it hard to scan multiple typefaces, so stick to a simple collection of fonts.

White space

Create a fluid design by surrounding words with white space to let elements breathe. The application of space around text boxes, images and other graphic elements makes a design easier to read. It’s also more likely to attract attention than a cluttered composition.

Fonts

Chose a typeface that sings the song of your content. Typefaces with rounded edges are usually friendlier note, hard-edged geometric fonts (sans serifs) are solid and strong; while serifs convey an elegant and sophisticated look.

Contrast

Contrast is one of the most imperative parts of design for mood, legibility and to make it stand out. Use a contrasting color palette background, fonts and graphics. Use photo filters to enhance the positive/negative space in an image and apply black or white to copy to create optimum contrast against a background image. A good rule of thumb is if you have a light colored background then you should use a dark font (and vice versa).

Use hierarchy to order your content

The most visually dominant feature in a design should be the most important part of the message. Apply color or scale to a graphic to see how it changes the hierarchy of elements and what grabs attention first.

Space of other elements

Use letter spacing to fill dead space, aligning text, or condense words that take up too much space. However, be careful not to reduce letter spacing so much it can’t be read, or increase it so much the letters become detached from one another.