“The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design.”

Adam Judge

I love this quote. Its truth is so obvious, but I think it is easy to dismiss. When i talk to clients – I always talk about an opportunity. When you get in front of your audience (whoever that may be), you have an opportunity to swim or drown. When you don’t invest in design, make no mistakes, your output is desgined….its just it has been designed by yourself. Essentially, we are all designers – just some are better than others. If you are creating PowerPoints on your own, here are 5 areas to focus on if you want to improve your designs.

Hierarchy and scale are one of the elements that make or break your design.

Pretend that you are in an elevator and you see your client…you may have 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 2 minutes. You would naturally create a hierarchy of information – what is the main, point, what is the supporting evidence – how can this be proved, for example. Design is no different.

So, you might make a more important element bigger and bolder than a less important element which might be smaller and fainter. See the example below – here the paper engages the audience with the title, provides a supporting headline, and then tempts the reader to read the smaller detailed text.

If all of the copy was the same size Readers would have had trouble distinguishing where one section stops and another begins, making for a harder to read design that has less impact.

When you want someone to looks at something specific, you point towards it. By positioning lines, shapes or photo elements, we can direct the eye to the most important parts of your design. People are inherently lazy… and they owe you nothing with your design. Hold their hand and lead them.

For example, check out this poster design by Design By Day that uses strong leading lines to first guide the eye toward the main focal point (the title), and then to various rungs of information.

Find shapes and lines within your images and graphic elements and use them to direct the eye in certain ways. The design below by Pony and Dogshow pull the eye towards the logo by the creative use of shapes and photos.

Having a focus in life Is important….in design it is crucial. Remember that the main role of design is communication. Whether you are communicating data, information, feeling or emotion, your design is telling a story – and every story has a beginning and a lead character. So make your sure your design chooses a focal point that tells this in the most efficient, most effective way.

In this design by Mathew Metz, the focus Is the clothes, he literally tells the story in the order that he wants. The yellow circle tells your eyes where to start…we are introduced to a happy beautiful girl the leading lines then draw the eye downwards, gazing over the outfit and finishing with the text, which is seen as being less important.

You see this everywhere – architecture, photography, graphic design, nature, biology. We have been taught that symmetry is good and randomness and chaos is bad. Maybe it is a biological tool for discerning good food from bad or good mates from bad mates.

But what is important is the most successful compositions achieve balance in one of two ways: symmetrically or asymmetrically.

Here’s an example of symmetrical balance. This wedding invitation design by Jennifer Wick uses a symmetrical composition by reflecting the positioning of type and graphic elements. By using symmetry, this design is made elegant, clean, and beautifully balanced.

Another kind of balance and an arguably more common type is asymmetrical balance. Asymmetrical balance is also a fairly self-explanatory term, in that it concerns creating balance without symmetry. The below example by Munchy Potato does this by understanding that the circles are not equal and therefore all have different levels of weight/importance. The artist found balance by placing them as a supporting element. This actually draws more importance to the main circle.

A good technique for mastering asymmetrical balance is to think of each element as having a ‘weight’ to it. Smaller objects might ‘weigh’ less than larger objects, and heavily textured elements might ‘weigh’ more than flatly colored elements. Whatever the case for your design, balance these weighted elements out until you reach an effective equilibrium.