Know Your Audience

For your design to be persuasive, it's important to design for your audience and not yourself.

Before starting any design project, think about who will be viewing your design, and make sure you know the answers the following questions:

✎ Who am I designing this for? 

✎ Where will my design be displayed? 

✎ What type of feeling do I want people to feel when they see it? 

✎ What message do I want to convey? 

✎ What type of reaction do I want to spark?

Motivation and Direction

It takes time to answer the questions above, but when you do, it may give you an inclination of what direction you want your design to go. If you have a problem finding inspiration, look at other designs that interest you and create a photomontage of your favorite images that give you the feeling your looking for. Maybe this will spark your own creativity.  

Color Palette

Color is essential in grabbing the attention of your audience and showing them the vibe of the graphics you're going for. Color can captivate, bring back past memories, and set the tone for your message. Color is significant to your design.

It can be difficult to choose colors that look good together, so here are some recommendations: 

1. Use your brand: If you have a brand, use the colors from that design. 

2. Your environment: Take your favorite colors from nature. Their natural mixture of  colors are right outside your door. 

3. Emotions: To give your design an exciting vibe select warm colors like reds and yellows. To give your design a zen feeling go for cool tones like blues and greens.  It's important that your color palette conveys what you want your audience to feel. Remember, other cultures can interpret colors differently. 

4. Photos: Use colors from the photos you selected for your design or images that give you the feeling your looking to have your audience experience. 

Visual Attraction 

Images attract your audience. When using a photo, make sure to crop out anything that would distract people from where you want them to focus.  

Look for free photos on sites like pixabay that will not violate copyright laws, and make sure that you give the artist credit for their work. There are several sites online if you're looking for royalty-free images, but you will most likely have to purchase the image for a small fee. 

Fonts

Selecting the right fonts can make or break your design. Less is more. Meaning, don't over do your design with several different fonts. We recommend only using two different fonts styles and no more that three sizes with different designs and weight. When using more than one font, we suggest you use a decorative and basic font that look cohesive together. Regardless of your font choices, contrast is critical. Your message will not be related if your audience can't see it clearly.  

Keep it Simple

After you create your design, take a close look at it and remove anything that is unnecessary in communicating your message. The best designs are often less not more. This allows you to give your audience blank space so that they can focus on what you're attempting to convey to them.