If you’re a newbie, chances are good that you’re looking for some high-impact graphic design tips to assist you with quickly improving your skills and understanding the industry. Perhaps for years, you didn’t grasp fully what a graphic designer does.
Or maybe you hadn’t realised that it’s a wide-ranging field that covers everything from the morning coffee cup in your hand right down to the mobile app you utilise in order to track your sleep habits and almost everything in between.
Graphic designers create brands and experiences, advertisements as well as publications, physical spaces, digital spaces, animations in addition to a limitless list of other things. Design directly influences our lives and has the capacity to influence the world for the better. There’s never been a more thrilling time to study graphic design, whether that’s online or in person.
Here are techniques to follow so that you can achieve great graphic design.
Limit The Number Of Fonts You Use
This might be the most commonly encountered tip we received from the designers we spoke with. They highly encourage that you utilise different fonts in one design however do not over-exaggerate and go overboard.
You always want to ensure that your fonts work well together and attempt to limit the number of fonts you utilise to three or less. Test and play around with the fonts that you have already in the software you’re working with. Alternatively you can always download free ones from reputable font websites.
Master Photoshop
You will utilise a plethora of different tools in your design process, and every designer has their favourite go-to apps. However there’s one program you must know like the back of your hand if you really want to succeed – Adobe Photoshop. This digital imaging computer program is so powerful and versatile that you not only can do most of your work with it, however you will most likely be requested to do so.
If you’re not that comfortable with Photoshop, self-taught or learned on another platform, you should really make a point of learning this program up to speed via practice as well as online graphic design courses, workshops or video tutorials. Do everything necessary to stay up-to-date and improve your Photoshop skills continually.
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
Steve Jobs once said, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” He said this in relation to his visit to Xerox, where the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) he saw provided the nugget of an idea for Apple’s personal computer.
Jobs never stopped copying and, as he said, “stealing” design ideas for ensuing Apple products. With that in mind, when you notice a brilliant piece of design, steal it and utilise it in your next project. This will improve your design powers exponentially over time.
Mix Up The Size Of Your Fonts
Try out experimenting with the font size, weight and various different fonts to enhance your design. In addition, you can go one step further and craft your entire design using nothing but typography.
Listen To Your Clients
Design is all about communication. As a graphic designer, your goal is to visually communicate the correct message to an audience, whether you’re putting together brands, invitations, marketing materials, product packaging or – alternatively – websites.
However you can’t communicate the correct message if you don’t spend time asking questions and then listening to your clients as they know that message best.
Listening to your clients can take many different shapes and forms during the entire design process, but we would encourage you to brainstorm questions prior to the first design consultation, put together an in-depth questionnaire for clients to complete. Check in with them during the scope of the project for feedback and input.
The more communication and clarification between you and your client, the more effectively you can communicate the correct message.
Make Sure Color Is On Point
Colour is one of the most impactful aspects of design in communicating a particular tone or message.
Therefore, it’s very important to think about the psychology of colour as well as a colour theory when choosing your palette. A very easy starting place is beginning with a colour palette of 1-3 main colours which complement one another and then utilising different tones of the same colour for consistency via adjusting the relative brightness or saturation. This is vital in achieving enough contrast in your palette. Think of each colour as having a ‘volume’ and adjust your tones so that they are not all shouting (or whispering) at exactly the same volume.
Also, it is important to play around with the proportions of your colour palette as well as how much of each colour is applied to the design. Remember smaller type will require a stronger distinction against a coloured background.