It’s “spooky season” now and while Halloween and many other things can really scare a person, there’s a few things that definitely scare a Graphic Designer when working on a project!
Using the Wrong Colours
Choosing the wrong colours can be distracting and make your text unclear and unreadable. When choosing fonts, try to choose both primary and secondary colours for your colour palette that don’t blend into each other (unless that’s the look you’re going for).
Including Too Many Fonts or Incompatible Fonts
Selecting a font for your project can be a hard decision sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you should just include all of your favourites. As a general rule of thumb, include 2-3 fonts per project to ensure a cohesive design. You many choose to have more font types in your project depending on the type of project you’re working on. One font is generally used for the title, while 1-2 different fonts are used subtitles and/or body paragraphs.
Not Following Layout Hierarchy
There’s a hierarchy in text and images that helps someone visually understand what details are considered important versus less important. This hierarchy leads the viewer across the design/text taking in all or as many of the details as possible. For example, for a block text like a magazine page, the reader will start at the top of the page and work their way down to the bottom.
Forgetting to Proofread
Not reading through your written text before finalizing your project can result in printing or publishing a project with spelling or grammatical errors. Having errors in your design work comes off as unprofessional and can cause the reader to ignore most of the content once the error is found.
Using Stock Photos or Including Photos with Poor Resolution
Some stock photographs are a perfect fit for a project to provide that visual image you need to get your message across. Sometimes, though, stock photographs can appear disconnected from your brand or project and give the wrong message. When choosing stock photographs, select ones that are clear and are of a high quality to provide a professional look to your project.
Thanks for reading! For some tips on how to create a colour palette for your next project check out our blog post, “A Guide to Colour Theory & Choosing Colour Schemes”.
Have a question or comment? Send us a message or shoot us an email at hello@laurenbakerpd.ca.