How to make beautiful posts, presentations and newsletters if you're not a designer at all

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

You don't need to be a professional to make a decent or even cool design. The main thing is to know the basic principles and master the simplest tools that will help you create attractive designs every day.

1. Focus on the main thing

One of the biggest signs of bad design is when it’s hard to pinpoint the message at first glance.

Yesterday my bank sent in a presentation of the platinum card that looked like this.

Unpleasant purple typography, crumpled text and overtly staged photos. What is the main advantage of the premium service is unclear. I decided that I would definitely not pay for a service that they could not reasonably imagine.

You have to highlight the basic information (photo, phrase, number, button) and give this object the greatest visual weight. This means drawing attention to it with the help of size, shape, color, texture, arrangement of other elements.

2. Order and space

After you have highlighted the main thing in your design, you need to think over the arrangement of all other elements in such a way that they are easy to read. This can be called a hierarchy - the ordering of items by size and location.

1. Divide all content into clear sections. These can be paragraphs, paragraphs, color highlights, frames.
2. Repeat elements. Repeats simplify navigation and create design consistency.
3. Leave enough space. There is nothing worse than overloading the design with elements.

3. Don't play with fonts

Typography is a separate serious discipline that designers have been comprehending for more than one year. Nevertheless, there is a universal rule that will help you not to get into a mess with fonts for texts. Use sans serif (sans) for headings, and serif (serif) for text boxes.

When overlaying text on a picture, make sure it is easy to read. You can adjust the brightness level of the image or apply color filters to make the background more uniform and the text more readable.

4. The simpler the better

Design is not about decorating information. By creating graphic design, you make complex information clear and visually appealing.

If you are working on a letter whose main task is to click on a link, you do not need to load it with unnecessary images, text and icons. If you need to create a flyer that advertises a sale, you shouldn't add information about the new collection and a bunch of product photos to it.

All beautiful effects like stickers, gradients, shadows should be applied very carefully, as a seasoning for a dish. If you overdo it a little, and you get a "salty" design that no one will like.

5. Design must be relevant

Always keep in mind for whom and why you are doing your design. The context sets the tone, mood, style, color scheme. What works for a child audience - light colors, jagged lines, cartoons - will not work at all for a digital marketing blog.

When designing for a brand, consider its style and color scheme.

6. Use templates, borrow ideas

Steal like an artist! This is not about literal theft of the finished design, but about inspiration with ideas and the application of what he saw in his work. The coolest designers share their designs on Dribbble and Behance.

In order not to create a design from scratch, use ready-made templates. Below - about the services in which you will find elegant ready-made solutions.

Crello

Free graphic editor, 10,000 ready-made templates. In Crello, you can design a business card, blog header, Instagram post, poster and much more. It is enough to choose the format, choose the design you like, add your text and image. Creation of a design takes 5-10 minutes at most. There is an interface in Russian and 30 free Cyrillic fonts.

Crello →

Placeit

Free screen mockups of all possible devices and in different contexts. An irreplaceable thing for those who develop mobile applications and interfaces.

Placeit →

Google Slides, Keynote

These programs have ready-made presentation themes and layouts, which are enough to create simple and beautiful slides. To see how fun and colorful presentations can be, search for keynote on Pinterest.

Google Slides →

Keynote →

Slides

Service for creating and demonstrating online presentations with many templates and ready-made elements. Slides also works from any mobile device, and during your presentation you can use your smartphone as a clicker to switch slides or even change slide content on the go.

Here you can not only store all your layouts, but also track the success of the presentations: how many times they looked, on which slide and how long they lingered, and what they scrolled through. These are especially useful features for those who send their presentations by mail, post them on social networks, or, for example, teach an e-learning course.

Slides →

Free templates from Creative Market

Creative Market is a hypermarket of ready-made designs, fonts, presentations, website templates, interfaces and everything that graphic designers can theoretically create. Every week, Creative Market organizes a free content distribution: they give away sets of dozens of different templates for posts on social networks, presentation designs, business cards, and even such strange things as, for example, templates for corporate stamps. All templates are created by professional designers from all over the world.

Creative Market →

The fact that you are not a professional designer does not at all negate your ability to create aesthetically pleasing materials. It is only important to develop your visual taste, be inspired by the work of cool creators, and most importantly - to master new tools. This skill will help you to independently declare yourself, your job or your business and gain the trust of the audience you need. Beautiful posts, presentations and mailings for you!