A trend I see in a lot of new designers and even more often in clients, is that they don’t understand that less is more. You don’t need to have your entire company’s history, the name and face of every single employee, 15 different colours, and absolutely no white space for people to understand what you do. Say you’re a construction company, do you need to have 10 construction workers, the yellow and black stripes of construction signs, a construction site and every single bit of equipment on the same ad? No, just take one element and make it work..
Heinz Ketchup has this wonderful ad which is at least 50% white space, and it works. You might not get it at first glance, but if the image is interesting enough, almost everyone will spend the extra second to figure it out. On the other hand, an image that’s too busy will be overlooked entirely.
Just remember, just because you have a design out there, doesn’t mean people are going to stop and look. You have to give them a reason to. A trick when examining one of your brilliant designs, step back and say, “if I saw this in a magazine/website/banner/whatever/ and I had no idea who had made it, would I still like it?” Then be brutally honest with yourself. Truth hurts, but that’s the only way you grow. Please, please remember, white space is your friend and doesn’t need to be filled in with pointless images.
BTW, if you’re wondering why I’m not showing examples of bad design, it’s because I don’t want to accuse anyone of doing bad work. This would just cause trouble, and I’m not one for trouble. If I decide that I need to show an example of what I would consider bad design, I will make it myself. Hope that explains.
Oh and sorry about the lack of tutorial today, I will try and do one for tomorrow.
