10 Common Mistakes You May Not Know
There are certain rules and guidelines you should follow when it comes to creating graphics for your website, email, and social media channels. However, many people are not aware of these rules, which can lead to mistakes that may hurt your business and brand. To help you avoid making some of the most common mistakes in graphics design, here are 10 rules that every designer should know. Be sure to share this list with your friends who work as designers or if you just want to see their reaction!
1) Don’t be Afraid to Tell a Story
A common mistake is telling your story with just text. In fact, it’s often best to use text and images in a unified manner. Once you have visualized your story, try printing out your slides and reading them aloud. This is an important test of whether or not people will actually get it when you present. If what makes sense to you doesn’t make sense to others, then work on simplifying (or restructuring) your content until it does make sense. While it might seem simple, choosing appropriate visualizations for your message can be tricky—and takes practice!
2) Don’t Cram Text On an Image
Some designers prefer to have a lot of text on an image. While these designs can look professional, they can actually be more difficult to read than designs with minimal text. The reason is because most people find it easier to read text when there isn’t too much of it on a single page. If you place too much information into an image, your readers will get overwhelmed and probably just skim through it. It’s better to separate important information into different images or put only a few bits of crucial information in one single graphic. Image and text should be viewed as two separate entities that play off each other—and we mean that in terms of content as well as design style! After all, images and words are meant for different purposes.
3) Don’t Use Grayscale in Graphics
Grayscale images are almost always a bad idea. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t include black and white images in your design portfolio—sometimes, it’s necessary for them to be included—but you should never create an image with a grayscale theme. Grayscale images are generally easier to look at when printed in black and white, which is why they were so popular years ago. Today, however, printing technology has improved tremendously; printing presses can easily handle full-color layouts, so there’s no need for such monotony.
4) Avoid Confusing Colors
The most common mistake that new graphic designers make is choosing colors that don’t go together well. This happens because they fail to pay attention to how two colors interact with each other. If you don’t have experience in color theory, then stick to basic color combinations. For example, blue and yellow work very well together, while red and green are hard to use together in a design. Use these basic rules when choosing your colors
5) Don’t Forget About the White Space
When you’re laying out a graphic design project, your eyes should look past visual clutter like fonts and pictures to find meaning in what’s between those elements. In other words, not all white space is created equal. Smart designers will understand that certain blank spaces in their projects need to be there for a reason—usually because something else takes up too much space or needs extra breathing room. For example, if you’re printing on business cards and want people to pay attention to one area of your design, it may make sense to drop everything else down so it has more air around it; when something stands out (even if there are still other important things surrounding it), that tends to attract people's eyes first.
6) If it Isn’t Easy, Get Help
Everyone has their own artistic skills, but most designers have an arena in which they excel and fall flat elsewhere. Graphic design is a great example of that—some people are better at Photoshop than Illustrator, some at InDesign than QuarkXPress. But if you’re going to use those programs for professional work, make sure you get familiar with them (or even hire someone who can help you). The more tools in your toolkit, the better your final product will be. You’ll impress clients (and potential employers) with your skill set and no one wants to do business with someone who appears amateurish or unreliable!
7) Check Details Before Printing
Make sure your artwork is print-ready by checking things like resolution, size, bleeds and color mode. Your printer won’t accept incomplete files or raw scans—and even if they did, mistakes can lead to delays and wasted resources. For example, a blemish or two on a photograph could be fixed in post-production; but if you use out-of-focus photos in your design that can’t be fixed (because of time constraints), they’ll end up costing more to fix later. Even worse, if you don’t pay attention to file types before you send your files over for printing, they may not process correctly—like trying to make an Excel document into a PowerPoint presentation after it’s already been made.
8) Beware of Using Negative Space
Negative space can be a great way to add more visual interest and contrast to your design. However, it can also look awkward if not done correctly. Negative space is, essentially, any background areas of an image that are not used for design. For example, leaving a large gap between an image and its border is considered negative space. This may be a cool-looking design idea, but as long as negative space is left unevenly across images, it will make all of your pieces look unpolished and unprofessional.
9) Remember to Make Things Legible
If a graphic isn’t legible, then it won’t be read. It could have been stunning or had amazing artistic value, but if your audience can’t see it or understand it, then you’ve wasted your time and theirs. (In fact, there are even studies that show people look at visuals for just three seconds before deciding whether to continue looking at them.) There is an art to graphics design and when working with technical information in particular, you must make sure whatever is being displayed can be understood by everyone. The basics of legibility include size and space—and you always want enough white space surrounding text so it doesn't blend into any other graphics elements on your page.
10) Keep Font Consistent Throughout
One of the most common graphic design mistakes is using inconsistent fonts in a single project. Even if you're not a designer, it's important to use professional fonts and keep them consistent throughout your designs. A best practice is to choose a font family that has regular and bold versions and use those instead of trying to replicate bold text with another font or altering things like kerning, letter spacing, line height, etc. Stick with one style for all headings—this will help keep your look consistent across projects. If you have different variations within a specific typeface (such as cursive vs. plain), be sure to only use that variation for stylistic purposes; never change from italicized text into upright when you're using two variations from one typeface.