Some help for non-designers who work with designers and other creatives.
It isn’t the fault of the non-designer that one is apt to fall into the trap of bad design that appears to be what’s considered good design.
But what is design?
It’s not making things pretty, although many designers will joke that they, “make things pretty.” Design is communication. With poor design even the greatest ideas will be tossed aside and ignored, at least until it’s communicated again carried by better design.
You might not realize it, but you experience design daily. You experience design when using your company’s internal documents or every time you send an email.
You’re probably staring at a work document on your text and wondering about the artist that made the design for you? Artistry isn’t required to be a designer and not all designers are artists.
Let’s begin our journey.
1. Design is not making things pretty.
We touched on this in the introduction. Why? This is probably the most misunderstood aspect of design and what designers do. Designers are supposed to make whatever gets passed their way beautiful and sometimes perform miracles on previously poorly designed material.
Help your designers by allowing for good design and even planning for the input of the designer when what’s imagined conflicts with the realities of design.
2. Design helps to communicate importance.
Even at the first glance of this image you almost certainly read the largest and most prominent text first and then moved on to the second row of text and lastly the smaller text in the lower right corner.
This is visual hierarchy and exists in almost every medium of visual communication. Below we’ll take a look at some examples of how visual hierarchy is used to distinguish the most important information from the information of lesser importance. You probably don’t need the help but a red box has been placed around the most important information, a yellow box around secondary information, and a green box around the least important information.
See, you didn’t need the boxes and you can also see that you don’t need to be a design genius to understand visual hierarchy. Just ask yourself this:
What should the person remember after only a glance?
That thing you want people to remember, that’s what you set apart from the rest.
You can even apply this to your everyday activities. Like what? The next email you write. If the recipient can’t understand what you want within seconds, then you might want to consider rewriting your email.
Now, how can you help your designer? Don’t say, “It’s all important.” Instead, consider what you want your audience to most remember. (Hint: It’s whatever reason you’re publishing the document or image).
First of all, design needs to be clear. After that it can be cutting edge, cool, and memorable. If it’s cutting edge, cool, and unclear… then it will be easily forgotten if not outright ignored.
3. Design adds meaning.
Look at the words on the sign pictured below.
You can tell it’s reserved if you can understand French or English. But what if you don’t? Without design playing a role in the sign nobody will know who or what this thing is reserved for.
You don’t want to be a jerk. So what’s the context? Let’s take a look.
Ah! Now we have context illustrated by design. You don’t want to make a pregnant woman, an elderly person, or someone who is injured stand while you lounge in a seat reserved for them.
This is what design is about. Effectively communicating an important message to others. Each structural element of the sign is a design element. The text is clear. There is ample space for French and English. The text is ordered with the more common language on top. The depictions of people are clearly identifiable as people. The pregnant woman has an obvious baby bump. The other depiction has cane to present both elderly or injured/physically impaired people.
Combined the message is unmistakable and can be determined no matter your understanding or non-understanding of French or English.
A Few Design tips for the Non-Designers
By no means is what follows a comprehensive list, but they will help those without a graphics team effectively communicate their message to their desired audience.
1. Black and white is your friend.
You’ve read articles about color theory and see plenty of fashion articles about bold color choices making people or brands stand out, maybe even saving the brand because of an unusual color choice.
Tap the brakes there, chief!
Be wary of using color improperly. That can be worse than keeping things a simple black and white. The benefit of black and white is that it’s high contrast, and that makes it easy for your viewers to understand.
If you MUST use color, stick to two colors or check out some helpful links in our blog: How to Choose a Color Scheme? The 3 Cats Labs Guide to Color Theory & The Color Wheel.
2. Less words and more pages is ok.
We all know the phrase, “No one will read more than a page.”
Wrong! People will read more than one page.
Think about the last time you listened to a speaker. How many slides did they present? You probably don’t remember.
Attention spans are shorter, but that doesn’t mean everything needs to be 8 seconds or less. We watch 2 hour long movies and people spend hours binging on full seasons on TV shows. Joe Rogan has 3 hour long podcasts and people love them.
People won’t remember the length of something when the message is well designed. People will only remember one of two things, and they are, “This sucked,” or “This didn’t suck!”
3. Allow time for design.
Time inflicts the most damage on good design. It’s a notorious fact that people simply don’t plan for the time it takes to create good design. Non-designers often wait until the last minute, run out of time, settle for “good enough” and then hope nobody notices.
It takes timer to create 10 slides. Why not cram everything onto 1? Breaking up data into blocks is tedious. Why not just slap everything together into a single mass?
Yes, good design takes time, but so did all the research and analysis that led to the message you’re trying to communicate.
You probably have something very important to communicate. It’s a shame that people won’t remember it because the same care and effort wasn’t taken in crafting the communication of your own message.
Let’s Talk About Your Brand
shane@3catslabs.com | Call +65-3159-4231
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