When marketing your business, one of the most important elements is often the one that is tossed aside after your logo and website have been created.
Yes, design plays a much larger part of your marketing than you would probably imagine. And with design, there are some general rules to help you organize information.
Rules of design are just like table manners.
They exist.
You can choose not to use them, but that silently (or not so silently if it is soup!) makes a statement.
If that above line feels practiced, it is because it is on repeat at our home at the dinner table with two tweens. Ha!
With a little bit of attention and practice, you can improve your design skills, which will have a big impact on your marketing if you are the one making all your marketing pieces.
Here are some guiding Design Principles to help you level up your marketing.
1. Hierarchy
When you are creating visuals for your business, remember that appear bigger, also appear to be most important. The most visually dominant feature in a design should be the most important part of the message. Apply color or scale to a graphic to see how it changes the hierarchy of elements and what grabs attention first.
In this image , the main item to be communicated is that the workshop was nearly sold out. The workshop name and date were secondary to the information that there were not many spots left.
2. Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds states that you should divide the image into three rows and three columns. Where the lines of the rows and column intersect is where the focus of the image should be. In the image below, you will see that it has been visually divided into three rows. The text is in one row, and the majority of the text is where the lines intersect.
3. Colors
Your business likely has brand colors, whether you have decided on them or not! You will likely see these in your logo, and they are often carried out on your website and even social media.
These colors help you to communicate your brand and serve as a visual tool for you to use in your marketing.
For all the businesses we work with, we typically have a color palette with several complimentary colors to use. These colors are used throughout our social media posts, ads, and any promotional materials.
4. Embrace Negative Space
Now, I might be dating myself here, but I do remember a time when Google was NOT the search engine king! If you were searching for something, you would go to Yahoo or Ask Jeeves (anyone??).
I distinctly remember standing in my college library seeing the Google screen for the very first time. Instead of headlines, stories and ads, they just had their name and a bar to type in your search. A vacation for the brain and eyes!!
When you utilize white space in your graphics, you show off what is most important.
If you are resonating with this, take a minute to look through your latest marketing pieces (social posts, ads, emails, flyers) and see if you could could make any changes for the future. How could you bring in these elements of design to promote your small business?
Stay tuned because I have even more design tips hitting your inbox in May!
Warmly,
Amy
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