Creating good design is pretty brain-twisting. It is not just about getting a canvas, grab a pencil and start drawing. A good design should be easy to the eye, visually appealing and functional to what it is about to achieve. However, creating a bad design is very easy that everyone can do it.
This guideline is meant to let designers know what to avoid when getting their hands to design.
1. Starting Out with a Blank Concept
This is the very basic way to create a bad layout. You don’t know what typeface or colour to be used, and above all, you don’t know how the end result will look like. make sure you do this if you’d like your design career to free fall.
2. Typeface from Another Planet
Try to use 3 years-old kid handwriting on a professional company artwork, or try utilizing serif fonts for kid-oriented promotion artwork. Make it not clear enough to be read and show it to your clients. They will absolutely remember you forever. No doubt on this one.
3. Spelling Errors
Spelling mistakes are something a designer should be very careful of. Try to write ‘pray’ as ‘play’, and your client will think you are playing on their business.
4. The Unmatchable Colour Combination
Colour gives big influence to artworks. So make sure you use right colour for the right purpose. You can try to use pink for an industrial and engineering website, so your clients will quickly decide to google again for another designer or another web design agency.
5. Cluttered Design
Having empty spaces in between elements are essential to create a good layout. Some brochure and booklet layout even having a big area of white space as part of the design. It will give the reader a good clean and professional look.
Put all elements including text, pictures and videos to fill in the area will certainly wreck the whole design aesthetic.
6. Outdated Style
Graphic design has something in common with fashion design. There’re times we should avoid some visual elements or effects. Though they are quite popular in the past, they are not trending anymore.
Let’s say bevel and emboss effect, some time ago, bevel effect with 5 pixel depth is quite pretty in the eye, but recently you might want to consider removing them completely.
Flat design is trending now. However, if you insist on still using bevel and emboss effects, please make it 1 pixel depth only.
7. Wrong Design for Specific Machine
A design that looks good on a computer screen doesn’t mean it will looks good in print result. In print design, you need to be very careful in applying colour. Make sure the CMYK colour combination is correct, otherwise, you’ll end up having ears chewed-off from your clients.
8. Bad Communication Between Clients and Designers
This is something very important as well. Client has to define clearly what they need in the project. A designer should be able to justify their design approach while compromising to the client needs. Or else, client and designer will go to different directions.
9. Too Many Bosses Around
One of the things commonly happens in the design process is having more than one person involved in the decision making.
Though there are common sense and logical standard involved, visual design is still pretty subjective. You’ll get different ideas from different persons. So, If you try to put all ideas into a single artwork, nobody is going to like it at the end of the day.
10. A Must-do Request from Client
99% of client are having bad design taste. That’s why they ask for a design service. And 1% of them probably have a good taste but doesn’t have any skills to realize their idea.
It is always good if clients are willing to understand and follow suggestions offered by designers to avoid jumble-up the result. designers always have better common sense, unless the designers are coming from another dimension by riding on
Designers always have better common sense, unless they are coming from another era by riding on a time machine.
That’s it. These are 10 ways to ruin your design. If you have other ways to ruin a website design and graphic design, please let us know in the comment box below.
Wahidin Wong is a digital marketer at Adkomu.com and an editor at Tobeeko.com. He is also a jazz and bossa lover.
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