Digital Marketing job is the most challenging environment to work in. That being said, working as a graphic designer is most envisioning – one gets to bring out one’s real talents and creativity!
Being in this field has taught me how to manage my time well, how to ideate quick designs and to tune in my designs in line with the brand’s objectives. Here are some tricks and hacks I’ve learned in my time that has helped me enhance my work:
1. Shortcuts. Your Keyboard is your Best Friend!
If you are using Adobe Suites like Illustrator, Photoshop or Aftereffects you must become the guru of all shortcuts. Shortcuts helps you a lot of time. If you are lazy to find them out there is always an option of assigning your own shortcut key for specific actions!
2. KISS (Keep It Simple, Son!)
Be it Facebook, Twitter or any Social Media Platforms, minimalistic designs will always trend and get more attraction. Whatever design you make keep it minimalistic. Make your designs simple, clean and legible so everyone can understand!
3. Infographics! Infographics everywhere!
An infographic is the key to attract any kind of audience and is most useful for people who regularly blogs or visit blogs. Infographic is like storytelling in a picture format with all the data for people to see it and understand instead of reading pages and pages of text.
4. Colour Combinations!
This is the most crucial part! If you are a graphic designer trying to build your reputation, it is highly important to know the science of colors! Understand what colour to use in which place and what colour combinations work on social media is important. For example, blue coloured text on green background is a disaster. When it comes to Social media, contrasting and eye catching colours work better. Learn about split-complementary and complementary colours before starting your career in graphic design. Always save some colour palettes. Below are few palettes which will work well in social media :
5. All Together!
If you are designing posts for Facebook or any Social Media platform, make sure that you do a series of posts on the topic. This will save you time to work on other deadlines. For example, If you make a series of posts on Facebook Facts, make a series from 1 to 10 for every fact so that the entire album will have a comparatively more reach than regular creatives!
6. Font styles and Typeface
Choosing what typeface font for your designs is the crucial factor for your final output! Unprofessional fonts like Comic Sans, GiddyUP or HoboST will not work! Always use sophisticated and popular fonts like Helvetica, SegoeUI or Times New Roman. Keep in mind that placement of fonts on your design is also important. The better selection of font and placement of it, the best your design will be!
7. “Mock It Up”
Once you give the client his print designs, they will ask you for mock-ups. So always keep PSD (photoshop) mock-ups of various themes ready so that you can show them or impress them how good the design will look on the specific medium!
8. Maintain colour themes
Sometimes using multiple colours in your design may work out well. But when you are making a corporate presentation or advertisement it is best to follow the colour theme or guidelines in your designs. It is a best practice to make your design look appealing! For example if the background is predominantly green, follow the same green theme for fonts, slides or shapes! Given below is an example!
9. Balance and empty space!
For any design to look classy, polished and hi-profile, there must be some empty space. If you look at the online ads of iPhone or Armani suit they will be stylish with a lot of empty space. This makes the audience/consumer to feel sophisticated and contribute to purchasing the product. Empty space is not just blank space. It means your product/image can fill the space but not cluttered with textual information. The more empty space in your design, the more classy it will look! Have a look!
10. Call-to-Action!
This is a great deal when you are creating advertisements and posters for your clients online! Call-to-action is so important that it has more than 50% chance of audience clicking on the ad compared the ads which don’t have call-to-action. So go ahead, put those shiny attractive call to action buttons straight up your design 😉
11. Stack up your “Stock”
When it comes to best design practice, always use images from official stock websites like www.shutterstock.com or any other such website. By doing this you are preventing any copyrights issues with images or vectors you use for endorsing your products. So it is always best to purchase images officially. You wouldn’t want to get copyrights sue-letter from anyone do you?
Final Summation
I hope you find this blog useful! I shall be discussing in detail about designing tricks in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in the next blog. Now open your Software and start designing and start impressing! Remember, Colours, Fonts and Placement! What you design should be your trademark. Your originality always speaks 🙂
