You got it right buddy! Money!

Great designs require your overwhelming attention to the tiniest bits, but most novice designers overlook such intricate details which in turn causes them conversions. This happens because their landing page is either not professional or too professional, both of them can ruin the overall experience of the readers.

If you ask professionals how they want their graphic design job done, you’ll get a response from the following ones.

Using minimalist and simple design is great, but there are many other factors to keep in mind while designing e.g. Placement of CTAs, User Friendliness, Responsiveness, etc.

There is no ideal layout to do that as they tend to vary according to your business requirements. However, there are some hacks that can help you to decide what’s best for your business.

Use these hacks, and you’ll never run out of the business of ideas.

1. Use Fonts that Complement Each Other

Like literally! Fonts that are anti in-nature can turn the odds in your favor.

Such pairs are broadly classified under the category of Serif and Sans Serif, e.g. Caslon and Myriad, Liberation Serif and Liberation Sans, etc.

However, it’s not imperative to pair only complementary fonts together as you can pair up contrasting fonts as well. For example, see this image:

Font Sifonn has been used for word Hawaii and Arvo for the rest. And they complement each other in a “nice” manner.

Also, use fonts that are apt according to the situation otherwise, the following can be the outcome.

After deciding that, you might be wondering about font size, right? Well, it’s probable to use 2.5 times of body font size for the headline. Also, a line height of 1.6 is recommended for all the body texts. In case you have a CSS document then you can do it by adding it to all the p elements, otherwise, for printed paper, multiply the body font size with 1.6 to get the desired line height.

Most people stop here after all these efforts, but from here the real journey begins, i.e. placing them. You can place them in the centre or left aligned or right aligned. It depends solely on you and what your content demands. As a first you can begin with aligning them and push those images to the other end, and while using background images, go with central alignment, e.g.

2. Harmonical Set of Thoughts

The colors that you use for fonts and text holders should sync with the background image.

Generally, typography is 90% of the complete design, so it is definitely a matter of concern to decide the optimal font color.

You can begin with two colors initially, e.g. using orange for all brand elements and blue for all CTAs sure look promising. Other than font size and colors, using a maximum of 58 characters per line makes the text more readable, which is your ultimate goal, right?

If you are looking for the separation elements or content that stands out, then it’s best to use underlines. It’s just like we’re transported back to our childhood days where the teachers used strict confrontation policies to bold, highlight and underline the important points. In deciding good handwriting, the spacing was of paramount importance, and it used to be much hassle to decide the ideal size of it. Similarly, the white spaces that we use in our design should be utilized in a subtle manner and you should never treat them as mere empty spaces. Remember the arrow in FedEx logo? That’s how you turn those whites into negatives.

So much negativity, I tell you!

3. Use “Iconic Transparency”

Did you get it? Transparency is the new cool and usage of transparent icons can make your website a lot more interesting. These icons can save you in your dire needs.

In the above example, the leaf has been made a bit more transparent while darkening the background so that it looks a bit more interesting.

But, while paying too much heed to making them transparent, pay a little attention to their typography as well. I mean making them speak things that they should and should not. You can use style guide(s) to design them. e.g.

Meanwhile, try to be a little handy with the sketchbook instead of shooting all your creative arrows to the innocent Photoshop. You need to be clear headed while designing icons, as they are the little graphical thingies that grab the viewer’s first look.

When in doubt, simply go to the lucid state and relax. Now, give it a try again, I’m sure you’ll succeed. Don’t be afraid of the failures, but be very afraid of doubts as doubts have killed more dreams than failure ever will.

No, no, no! Procrastination is not what I meant! This is exactly like the democracy that we are “enjoying” right now i.e. having the liberty to choose the most stupidest entity that we can think of.

4. Enhance the Colors of Your Images

Don’t run down on the natural elements of the photograph but enhance its colors so that it looks a bit more of a graphic designer’s’ job.

See how people at Pinterest look at the images, they can turn literally anything and everything into infographics. These pictures look good without hindering the essence of graphics. Also, one more thing, if you find good design layouts on Pinterest or anywhere else then make sure to bookmark them as they can be of some use to you later on.

So, coming back at it, make those damn changes in the images to make them look vivid and saturated. Also, when you’re looking for the background image then make sure to root for the one that has ample of unused or copy space. This space can be utilized to write copy that goes with your brand’s idea.

You can crop the images instead of saving some loathful JPEG files in their full blooming state as they add unnecessary burden to your processor which you can easily avert by using various free online softwares to save it as an optimized PNG file, one example of such softwares can be Tinypng.

These softwares don’t compromise with the quality, you can be sure of that!

5. Be a little Nerdy

In the pictorial sense of stating the obvious! E.g. Close-up of various exotic furniture in your website background if you’re in the business of selling “turn your house into a home” stuff.

People love such things. Not getting anywhere with that? Steal from the great designs of your niche!

Don’t worry! Steal as much as you want they’ll just think that your imitation game is on point. Who would mind stealing the image of Eiffel tower when you’re a travel agent?

See? No one does! Also, Pablo Picasso has said that good artists copy, great artists steal. So, why bother? If one great man has said it, then it must be right, right?

When designing your office, make sure to put down posters of some of your artworks or some random motivational quotes.

They might inspire you to work in a better way or your clients to buy from you; among them both, the latter one is a way more uplifting thought.

6. Shape them Percentages

Numbers look more appealing to the users no matter how much you hated math during high school. Oh, you loved it? Might be a different kind of “math“. People get astonished by the amount of trust it adds to their brand just by using some percentages in a pictorial format.

See in the example below.

Once I was on their website, these numbers appear in a counting format starting from zero. Trust me, I waited patiently for the counting to stop and mind you, nobody forced me to do that.

Also, you must have seen organizations boasting about their client’s success, e.g. we helped XYZ company to grow their sales by 200%. That just says they have doubled the sales and that too without mentioning the period, but what does it matter? It looks promising to me. If they had used “doubled” instead of the percentage, then it would have been less harmful to my money.

In short, shapes, percentages and pie-charts are some of the best ways to prove your metal in a company presentation as they look informative and interesting at the same time.

7. Use Grids for the Images

Grids are the best way to create a layout for your images. Also, it simplifies the editing process from hefty to fun and frolic.

There are many grids available out there, but grid 1170 is considered to be the best when it comes to responsive design especially for the Bootstrap Framework. Grid 1140 was the first introduction which was later revamped to get to the 1170 grid. Higher size grids are recommended while designing as they can be adjusted comfortably to lower resolutions. Most novice designers feel grids to be restrictive to their imagination and try to “break free” from them, but when they visually come across its benefits, they tend to settle down with break points.

Grids are a defining factor when talking about typography as well. E.g. Never start writing content from gutter space, also known as white space. The white spaces need to be used in a better manner to get the best out of them.

The 1170 grid has 12 column layout with 68px width and 30px gutter. The initial breakpoint for mobile devices is 768px.

8. Steal like an Artist

Who doesn’t copy? Shakespeare copied Romeo Juliet from another play named “The tragic tale of Romeus and Juliet“, and you thought copy is a bad thing to do! No, brother.

Copying is good, as long as nobody finds out; in case somebody finds out then we can always use a politically correct term “inspired” to make it sound nice. You can steal designs from other websites such as pick header from one and footer from another! No, no, I’m not being skeptical about the taste of your creative juices, but, when there is a lot that you can do with it then why waste it on some stupid things?

We humans need to inspire each other through the collaboration of ideas, one day you’ll get inspired from someone, other days someone else will get inspired from you and the chain continues. That’s how it goes. There are some astonishing examples of free templates available at Pinterest that can speed up the process of designing. See for yourself:

9. Sleep like a Babe

You need to get your creativity running, and stress is definitely not an option; now, what do you suggest?

Sleep is a considerable option, although, some might believe in the overnight explosion of thoughts that are governed by the look of the shimmering stars and the calmness before upcoming calamities, but you are not doing a one time job, right? This is more than just a reason for you to be up and ready in the daytime as well.

Some designers find it difficult to just switch off their brain at idle times, but during the need of the hour, they find themselves infected with the dullness of ideas. Think for a moment, how many resources you could’ve utilized if you’d penned down those thoughts?

This phenomena is widely known as mind map, and to create one you just need a pen and a paper. With your mind map in your hand, you can set aside the creativity blockage for good.

The Conclusion

A single constructive idea from human brain can build cities and a destructive one can turn them into ashes. It’s not in the context here but just so you know!

Now, what are you waiting for? To summarize what we’ve learned till now? That ain’t happening bro; you need to go through the complete blog as there are no shortcuts to live and die.

Now, go, build an immortal digital universe of your ideas as a wise man once said, ideas are bulletproof, but he forgot to mention how did they become bulletproof, simply by embedding them into the digital world.

Is there any other way to pass that knowledge? Let me know in the comment section below.