Styles and trends change by the week, whether it be shoes, clothes, or social media content. As a marketer and graphic designer, it’s crucial to stay on top of modern requisites. What’s surprising is that most graphic design tips are quite simple, such as using white space more effectively and keeping designs simple enough to comprehend.
The elements of graphic design are far and wide, whether you’re making graphics for social media, a website, or an ad campaign. However, it’s crucial that your designs are consistent across your online platforms, among other graphic design necessities. To help you navigate your social media designs, we’ve laid out a simple framework that’ll keep your content engaging, consistent, free of clutter, and elegantly simple.
- Pick a Catchy Color Palette
Using color in an aesthetically pleasing way requires two things: a trained eye, and ample time to design. Rushed work is bound to be the bane of your design, so taking the time to craft a fitting color palette is among the most integral steps toward an impactful design. If you’re not sure where to start, Adobe Color is your answer.
Adobe Color is a free web service which offers a color wheel to use in your palette design, allows you to upload your own images, and can quickly gather colors for new palette combinations. After your palette is created, it can be imported and saved to any other Adobe program for use. Ideating a great color palette for your social media is possibly the most time-consuming step of the design process, meaning you can nix a large item from your to-do list once finished.
- Keep Your Branding Consistent
If you’re designing social media pages or posts for an established brand, consistency should be a priority. This becomes even more important if you’re working on multiple designs across a single ad campaign or web project, as you’ll have to take note of the aesthetic and tone of past design work to remain consistent.
In short, staying consistent with your branding means ensuring that the tone is the same despite the content or mediums used to deliver it. So if you’re posting playful cartoon content on a brand’s Facebook page, it wouldn’t make much sense to publish realistic stock photos on the same company’s Instagram. It wouldn’t be consistent. Consider the placement of text within your content, the use of consistent typefaces, and whether your color palette is visually memorable – if these three boxes are checked, you’re in good shape.
- Cater to Your Target Audience
You’re likely designing social media content for a particular audience – but without understanding who your target audience is, your design work will be frankly uninformed. If you’ve already done your audience research, kudos to you. If not, you’ll have some work to do. Keeping your audience at the top of your design priority list will more easily allow you to create a post that will genuinely resonate with and engage them. Besides choosing a fitting color palette, this is among the most important graphic design tips to follow.
- Simplicity Is Powerful
Oftentimes, graphic designers can get caught up in the creative process – ultimately leading to a design that makes little sense. If your design ends up feeling cluttered, consider nixing some unnecessary elements rather than over-designing. You may find that deleting certain elements actually enhances the overall design by allowing the focal point to take center stage, as opposed to a surplus of elements that overload your audience’s senses.
Special effects, such as gradients, shadows, and clunky 3D elements, can quickly clutter up your design. Not that special effects don’t serve their purpose, but as Oscar Wilde said, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
- Learn to Love White Space
More often than not, less is more. White space can be a powerful design tool, as it keeps the subject matter in full focus. Apple, in particular, has mastered the art of white space.
In the above advert, Apple marketers give you little opportunity to focus on anything other than the beautifully framed iPhone X. In essence, they give the design room to breathe. There are really only three elements to observe: the headline, an impactful subheader, and the phone itself.
It’s no wonder Apple has grown into possibly the most influential company of all time – their iconic marketing, which largely depends on white space for impact, creates an image of simple sophistication. It’s safe to say that Apple reached a new level of minimalist graphic design, and if you follow suit, your social media content can stand to benefit immensely.
If your business needs a hand designing social content that engages and impresses your audiences, contact the digital marketing experts at KWSM for assistance.
92% of Consumers Buy Based On Color
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