Are you the self-taught visual designer of your company to whom Canva is the tool to go? You are not alone. How about, have you ever heard of visual hierarchy? If not, there is no need to worry. We asked Luxembourg-based graphic designer Silje-Marie Molland to share her tips to help beginners one step closer to mastering their creative visual content.
Hierarchy
Start with thinking about what is the most important and secondary important information for your visitors or readers. In social media, we scroll through content, and it goes fast. Your potential clients only have an attention span of 2-3 seconds before they move on to the next post. If you post a picture containing a massive same size body text, it looks overwhelming and time consuming to grasp what you want to say. Most people are not willing to put effort in to read it all, they continue scrolling.
When skimming a page, the eye jumps first to the biggest, brightest element. This can, for example, be a large headline. This is then followed by the second largest element. The eye typically moves from left to right in an F shape in languages where left to right is the reading direction.
By using a clear hierarchy, you can catch the reader with a good headline and make them interested in continuing to read the body text.
Contrast
When trying to catch attention, a misconception is to make all your elements in a post stand out. Instead of making the elements fight one another for attention – which would make the viewer visually overstimulated – let one element play the role as the main attention grabber. You can do this by, for example, using size contrast, colour contrast or shape contrast. If you only have text for your visual post, this is a good chance to apply the three mentioned ways to create contrast; size for hierarchy, colour to lead attention and shape contrast using different fonts. Contrasts make a more dynamic visual content.
Fonts
If you are new to typography, choose a maximum of two fonts which you will use consistently across all platforms. As readability should be in focus, don’t fall for the temptation of using “curly” fonts or display fonts, especially not for body text. To choose only one highly readable font family and vary the weights (regular, italic, bold) is also a good option. Make a hierarchy using different font sizes and weights; headlines, section headings, quotes, body text and picture text and so on.
We all have experienced text blocks being so wide that the eye had to search for where the next line starts. This reduces the readability. The optimal line length for a column is 45-90 characters. A smart move is to use left-aligned text. The eye reads from left to right. By using centred text the eye has to search for the next line-start while justified text creates uneven gaps between the words which disturbs the reading flow.
Let your content breathe
Don’t fully pack your pages with text and elements, this will make your content drown and your visitors to leave. Allow white space. Together with hierarchy, white space makes it easier to get an overview and grasp your content, your content looks tidier and more professional. In this regard; don’t underestimate line height.
Round up
The points above are all centred around how to objectively make your content look more readable and visually pleasing and professional. When all this is said, it is important that the mentioned elements play together with the identity of your brand. Is your brand focusing around the ocean? You might choose blue as one of your main colours. Are you creating branded content for a five star hotel? Then you would wish to choose a font that represents quality, but also make your choice based on whether this is an old venerable hotel for the “upper class” or a new hip concept that targets young adults. As a last tip, check your competitors.
