10 Graphic Design Rules That Should NEVER Be Broken [Infographic]

Aug 8

Graphic design is a discipline that celebrates creativity in all its forms! If you can dream it, with design, you can do it. But, that’s not to say that there aren’t a few graphic design rules to stick to.

In fact, one of the best ways to create a design that’s aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand is by sticking to these tried and tested rules!

These are:

Maintaining consistency
Avoiding poor legibility
Avoiding colour discord
Preventing non-proportional scaling of elements
Avoiding raster images
Maintaining alignment
Using only 3 fonts
Creating a visual hierarchy
Checking grammar
Embracing whitespace

Let’s explore each of the rules, and at the very bottom of the article you can check out the full infographic with all the information provided.

Maintaining Consistency

To create a cohesive brand, you should look to maintain consistency across all your design elements and materials. When working with a brand, keeping this consistency allows the audience to clearly recognise that each product is an extension of the brand.

Make sure you’re being consistent with…

Colour Palette: Avoid using too many colours within your scheme, try to stick to 5 and below
Typography: Don’t use more than three fonts across your branding, and especially in a single design – more on this to come!

Avoiding poor legibility

The key to a good typeface is legibility. Pick fonts that are easy and straightforward to read, and that don’t require your reader to focus more than they need to.

A well-made font will be able to convey your message with ease, and what’s more, one that’s difficult to understand may have the opposite effect and put off your audience and drive them away.

Avoiding colour discord

The colours you pick should complement both each other and the other elements within your branding deck. Plus, you should also be thinking about what particular colours convey to your readers.

PRO TIP: A little bit of colour theory knowledge goes a long way. Take some time to think about what it is your colours are saying to your audience.

You can quickly generate colour schemes using the tools listed here.

Preventing non-proportional scaling of elements

The title here might be a little confusing, but it essentially means that you should avoid stretching out elements to make them seem unnatural.

When resizing an image, photograph, logo, or anything else, make sure you’re maintaining the correct proportions when doing so. Nobody wants to see squashed photos, that’s just unprofessional!

Avoiding raster images

A raster-based image is one that’s made out of static pixels, which means when you try to enlarge it above its natural size, you’ll get pixelation. Sometimes this isn’t super noticeable, but other times it is.

You can avoid this by using high-resolution images – ideally the bigger the better. Better yet, make use of vector file formats like SVG, as these will scale to any size without pixelation.

Maintaining alignment

Alignment is vital. Randomly changing the alignment of elements – specifically text – in your designs will leave you with a final product that’s jarring and difficult to read.

PRO TIP: Don’t use centre alignment for any reason. It’s incredibly difficult to read, and will put a lot of people off, making them not even bother to try.

Using only 3 fonts

It doesn’t matter how nice the fonts you’ve picked are, having too many just makes things look messy and ugly, and nobody wants that.

Limit yourself to no more than 3 different fonts. Or even better, limit yourself to only one font family.

Creating a visual hierarchy

In all forms of design, there should be a clear hierarchy between the elements on the page.

This allows your reader to grab an at-a-glance understanding of the important elements, plus you can control where they’ll be most likely to look, and in what order they’ll read the content.

Checking grammar

If you’re given copy to work with, you might think that checking for spelling and grammar errors isn’t your job, but it is.

You’d be surprised how many mistakes slip through the net during production. So, when you’re putting everything together, make sure to cast a critical eye on the text elements.

Note: If you’ve ever received a text with a bunch of weird symbols all over the place, they might be reader’s marks. Learn more about them here.

Embracing whitespace

Whitespace refers to the section of your design that doesn’t have any graphic elements at all. The whitespace hasn’t been tinkered, edited, or in any way interfered with.

Use whitespace as much as possible. Giving your elements room to breathe will lend the design a greater sense of professionalism and sophistication.

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the Infographic! Check out the whole thing below: