A well-designed and aesthetically pleasing website has the power to elevate a brand, while a poorly designed and ugly one has the power to destroy it! While many business owners seek help from a third party to ensure that their website ticks all the boxes from a graphic design perspective, there’s no reason why you can’t give it a good go yourself.
For budding graphic designers, here are 10 basic tips for beginners:
- Always choose colors that contrast
Colors have the power to communicate so many things, and can have a striking impact on a visitor’s reaction to your site’s design. Try to select high-contrast color palettes or colors that can be found opposite each other on the color wheel.
- Make your site design look cohesive
With a color palette of 1 to 3 primary colors that fill most of the design, and 1 to 3 secondary colors to act as a contrast to the palette, you can create a cohesive look and feel.
- Choose fonts that are easy to read
Readability is essential for good website design, and on your landing page, try to choose a simple typeface that can easily be read, yet still reflects a little of your tone and personality.
- Minimize fonts
Using more than 5 fonts on one page can be tricky for the eye to scan and read, and make it even more difficult to absorb information.
- Make good use of white space
The value of white or negative space should never be underestimated, and when correctly used, can help draw the focus to a piece of text or a video, for example.
- Pay attention to alignment and structure
Structure is always good in graphic design, and by keeping elements on a page aligned, you can naturally lead a reader’s eye to where you want them to go. Fail to align items properly, and readers will quickly become confused and leave the site.
- Emphasize your Call-To-Action (CTA)
Designed to prompt an immediate response from a user or encourage a conversion, CTA buttons should be designed with contrasting colors to that of the background, or have plenty of white space around them, so that they stand out and can easily be found.
- Have respect for the fold
The fold is a graphic design term that describes the top of a page that’s visible when a screen loads. The fold is at the bottom of the screen and to view anything underneath it, it’s necessary to scroll down. For the best results, make your key messaging and CTA appear above the fold.
- Remain consistent
From your choice of font and colors, to quality, lighting and proportion, a consistent style helps users have a more successful visit to your site, and includes all images, too.
- Simple is sometimes best
Websites that are easy to navigate and easy on the eye, are usually favored by users, but this doesn’t have to mean that you have create a boring site. You can still go to town with bold colors and unique designs, just remember that white space, clean lines and aligned elements should be always be maximized.
As trends and technology change, it can be harder and harder to know what makes good graphic design and to resist the urge to pay a professional to do it for you, but with the 10 tips above, you have a fighting chance to create a professional, cohesive website.
