Designing effective graphics

In this course, graphic designer, educator, and coach Mariah Althoff teaches us how to harness the foundations of graphic design to create successful graphics using Adobe Express.

But what does a successful design even look like? Fundamentally, a successful design (graphic or otherwise) effectively conveys information or elicits an action. In our time today, Mariah will walk us through a design from concept to creation.

At the very beginning of your design process, before even putting cursor to pixel, ask yourself, what is the goal of this graphic? For today’s example, Mariah is designing an event poster for a music festival with the goal of capturing interesting and selling tickets. She shows us how to:

Let’s dive in.

Before you begin designing it’s important to take a moment to define who you’re designing for. Brainstorm and identify who your audience is, so when you start designing you’re fully set up for success. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to start:

While it can be tempting to use all your favorite fonts in your brand or design, limit yourself to the use of only two or three fonts in your graphic so it looks professional and is easy to understand. Mariah recommends you choose a font for each of the following:

When it comes to defining your colors, Mariah recommends you choose one of each:

Additional colors can be used for accents, but choosing one color for each of these three categories will get you off to a great start.

Your colors should align with the overall aesthetic of your graphic and, if you’re not quite sure where to start with creating a color palette, Adobe Express has recommended color palettes so you don’t have to start from scratch.

We mentioned we’d come back to hierarchy, so let’s talk about it now. Visual hierarchy uses design elements to establish an order of importance. This helps to strategically move the viewer’s eye throughout a design and can help them to understand the most important information in a design. (Even subconsciously!)

Establishing visual hierarchy can be done with every element of a design; images, text, accent elements, etc. and through size, boldness, and color.

With text, for example; the header text should be the biggest and boldest, the subheader text is next, followed by the body text being the smallest.

Mariah wraps up the graphic by ensuring proper spacing and alignment, adjusting colors slightly, and ensuring everything is just right. Thanks for joining us for this course and remember: