clean design tips
By: Mara Dockery (maradawn)
If you’re wanting your designs to stand out, one of the most important things you can do is making sure your designs are clean. If your design is too busy, it will become distracting and hard for the viewer to decide where to look. Here are 5 clean design tips:
1
focus
What do you want to emphasize most? Is it text, a shape, etc? Pick just one thing and make that the largest or boldest in the design. Everything less important should be more subdued or smaller in size. Not everything in your image should have the same visual weight, even if you love it all.
2
spark joy with white spaces
White space means that your image has a nice balance between stuff and space. White space is like the Marie Kondo of design. If your image is packed full of photo, text, art, etc., simplify it. Take something away until you’re left with only what’s essential. Your image should have some breathing room so the eyes can rest.
3
find unity
If you’re using different design elements, consider how you can make them feel cohesive. For example, if you have a texture, font, and shape, try using similar or complementary colors for all three elements to bring them all together.
4
balance elements
When you’re designing with a busy photograph, pair it with a really simple shape or minimal, clean font, like those in the Simple Text Pack. If you’re using an image with a plain or simple background, you can experiment with more complex shapes, patterns, and fonts, like the fonts in the Retro Text Pack.
5
bring order
Visual organization makes a design easier to understand and in most cases more pleasing to the eye. You can do this by aligning your design elements horizontally or vertically along an invisible line. Or, by repeating design elements in a somewhat predictable pattern.