2020’s got us all down, so it’s no surprise that you might feel a lack of drive or inspiration in your creativity! And that’s okay, girl! 💁‍♀️ These ten tips for all things graphic design are the best of the best and guide you in the right direction to get started! 💫

Consistency is Key

Be consistent with the typography you are using. If you can stick to three fonts max, you are doing good! 👏 Even better if you can stick with one font family for the whole graphic! When thinking of the color palette, you want to be sure to stick to about two to three. When you get into more than five colors, it throws the balance off.

Avoid poor legibility

Nobody wants text that is hard to read; try a font like Sans Serif and bolder fonts that are more legible! If you’re looking for a decorative font, try Cooper Black, Juniper STD, and Quiche Sans! If your writing isn’t legible, your message will not get across to the reader! 🤓

Steer Clear of Color Discord

When choosing colors, be sure to think of how they complement each other. When thinking of this, you might want to reference the color wheel and select complementary colors. And stay away from analogous colors which are any three colors next to each other on the color wheel. And also monochrome colors, which are colors that are similar in shade, like red, burgundy, and maroon.

Prevent Non-proportional Graphics and Text

Proportions are everything, be sure to keep all your images to scale when creating your graphic. Be careful not to distort your images too much, or your graphic won’t look professional!

Stay Away From Raster-Based Images

Raster-based images are not your friend!🙅 These images are created with individual pixels that put together an image. To stay away from these, make sure you choose higher resolution images that will be clearer when you resize.

Maintain Alignment

Adjusting your text and graphic elements to align in an organized way is very important. Think of your graphic like a grid; lines are going vertical and horizontal. You want to keep your text and graphics aligned with these lines. Randomly putting text and graphics together can confuse the eye and reflect poorly.

Find a font you like but can’t quite figure out the name to use it for yourself?

If you have an adobe subscription (if not, you can start a free trial), you can find any font you love on the internet and download it. Then upload it to Adobe Creative Cloud reader to find a similar font or the exact font if it’s available!

Initiate a visual hierarchy

Use size and color to show which item or information is most important over another. You want to draw attention to your graphic’s main point, then bring the eye down the graphic based on importance. For example, if your title is small and on the bottom of the page, nobody will know what your graphic is about till they get to the end, which will end up being very confusing for the reader! 🤔

Watch your grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Having errors can hurt your credibility and professionalism. A great tool to help you check all of your writing is Grammarly. It’s a free online writing assistant that checks all spelling and grammar!  Be sure to triple check everything before finalizing your graphic!

Embrace whitespace

Whitespace is your best friend! Whitespace is also known as negative space in whatever you are designing. The more whitespace, the more your graphic can look professional and sophisticated!

Graphic design is important now more than ever before, with the current graphic design market in the US being $15 billion. And logo and branding at $3 billion, it’s safe to say this is the future of design.

Now take these ten great tips and get creative with it! If you’re not taking advantage of these helpful tips, your competition will!

Curious about what’s next in the marketing, public relations, or branding world? Come back next week and check out our blog, The Buzz, for our weekly updates! For more information on how we can help with your graphic design needs, contact us at info@itscreativelabel.com.

It’s halfway through the year, and we’ve already seen so many brands F up. We learn from the actions we take but we also learn from other brand’s mistakes. Today, we’re going to share with you some of the top mistakes so far in 2019, and how to prevent the same from happening to you. Take note people, we’ve compiled a quick list of four main areas we’ve found are so important and sometimes overlooked. 

Have a sounding board 

It’d be so awesome if every idea you have is ready to go. Truth is, while you may have some great ideas, they’re often a diamond in the rough. Having a team of people who can help refine a concept is a gamechanger. It’s also a major plus in the event that maybe you’re unintentionally presenting things in a way that could be offensive to people. Having extra sets of eyes and expertise, helps you avoid that.

Crazy example here. Dominos Russia launched a campaign offering 100 free pizzas for 100 years to customers who got their logo tattooed on their skin. After they started getting thousands of submissions, they started putting up restrictions and a cap to how many winners there would be. Ouch! Maybe if they had run the idea through more people with expertise in this area they could’ve avoided this embarrassing move.

Have a diverse group of people in the creative room 

It’s 2019 and, thankfully, diversity is taking over conversations on and offline. After all, you don’t want to make careless mistakes like H&M did when they released their controversial “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle” children’s hoodie that they ended up having to take down. It’s things like these that having a team that’s diverse can help you avoid overlooking due to simply being unaware of issues that affect other groups of people.

Make an effort to be in tune, be empathetic to issues that may not impact you but impact other people

Emotional intelligence is key to being a great leader and a great brand. Truth is, it’s never about you. It’s about what you can do for others. In January 2018, Estee Lauder launched a new foundation line called Double Wear Nude Water Fresh Makeup SPF25. Although over 30 shades of product were released, over 80% of the shades were geared toward lighter-skinned women. It’s usually a challenge for women of color to find a brand that even offers options for darker skin, even harder to have enough options.

Because of this, it’s so crucial that you’re genuinely making an effort to be empathetic to other people’s issues even if they don’t directly impact you. You may only be aware of a few challenges but if you open up to more groups of people, you’ll discover there are far more opportunities to step in and help people through better products and services.

Learn How To Respond Quick Quick Quick 

Earlier this year, we watched Kim K start a Twitter rampage between all of the top fast-food chains. If you are unfamiliar with the showdown below is how it went down. But if you’re a more visual person, check this out. 

So what did Jack In The Box do to annoy Kim K? Funnily enough, nothing related to an actual order being wrong or poor customer service. This prompted a ton of people to get, understandably, curious about what in the world happened. 

Kim said the issue was “not about me or a wrong order. Nobody recognized me and it’s something that I observed that affected other customers at this particular location that was concerning.”

Shortly after, Jack In The Box responded and resolved the serious situation

The company tweeted. “Hi Kim, we are unable to DM you, please send us a DM with how we can get in touch with your team & someone will reach out immediately.” After this, it looks like things were taken care of since Kardashian tweeted “Thank you @JackBox for the quick response and handling the situation!” 

We’re curious now. We really hope you found this article helpful. In the comments below, let us know which tip here you connected the most with!

Hey there! If you’re here, chances are you’re looking for help with your brand. We see you! And we’re here to help. It gets a little crazy when trying to build and keep up a consistent brand identity. We know this. For those of you who are like, “umm what’s a consistent brand identity?” Put simply, your brand identity is what helps set the foundation for your company’s unique personality. This begins with establishing your position in the market to attract your dream clients.

For many small to mid-sized business owners, it can be extremely challenging to set clear brand guidelines. That being said, we’re going to help you get started today with some of our core principles when setting up guidelines for our clients. You may be a small or mid-sized company, but that doesn’t mean you have to visually look like one. When it comes to branding, you always want it to look like you have a team behind you. 

Do An Audit of your Target Market

Do you know who your competitors are? What makes them successful in the digital space? If not, it’s time to start digging deeper. Your goal here is to start identifying a highly narrowed down set of competitors. Avoid looking at a broad spectrum where you might be factoring in info about vastly different customer segments. In order to select the right competitors to analyze, consider factors such as your price point and the types of clients you want to attract that might.

Answer Key Questions About Your Brand

If you aren’t creating a persona around what your brand looks and sounds like, that’s a huge reason why you probably feel totally lost. For starters, here are some questions you should start asking yourself about your brand.

1. What kind of problems are you solving? 
2. If your company was a person, who would it be and why? 
3. What are some key values, emotions, or attributes you want to convey across your branding? 

With these answers, you can begin layout out some basic framework around the voice and type of content you create around your brand.

Create Processes for Your Team

What good is it to have all the visual & brand voice guidelines if your team is clueless? You want to make sure that you have a clear set of guidelines for employees to refer to no matter what department they’re in.

For example, some things you can consider when setting this up are as follows:

• Who is the decision maker for each kind of project?
• What does the workflow look like for some of your most common products or services rendered?
• What are the company’s objectives that should always be strived for?

By setting these up, you’re not only creating an efficient system for work but also helping your team be much more autonomous. Yay to less emails for every tiny detail!

Set Up Your Brand’s Manifesto

This is your brand’s declaration of beliefs. Knowing this creates a bridge in helping you develop that crucial emotional connection with your potential customers. A clear manifesto will help you and your team align every message, campaign, and interaction with the customer with your trying to attract. Let’s take Redbull for example. Redbull puts out ads that embody pushing life to the limit as an example of what the beverage stands for. This limit pushing feeling speaks to their target audience on an emotional level and is memorable. This emotional connection, in turn, impacts its target consumer’s purchase making decisions. And purchase making decision mean $$$$. 

Hire Help

Unless you have an in-house team of creatives ranging from designers to copywriters that can guide you, we suggest hiring help. Your brand’s identity is not something you want to be cheaply done, DIY, or rushed through–because people can tell. The foundation of your brand will be seen and felt for its entire lifespan. That’s a warning. Handle with care. 

Here at Creative Label, we work with an amazingly talented team of industry experts that’ll make for a seamless process. Whether you need partial branding work such as just a logo or a full suite of branding, we’ve got you covered. Just send us an email at info@itscreativelabel.com to get started!

We all have that one girlfriend who is always complaining about the types of guys that she attracts–

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