Yesterday, I was helping my sister Kim from Overall Beauty do some small tweaks to her site, and it brought to mind how effective these can be.

In my other life I am graphic designer with over 12 years of experience. I thought as a holiday gift to the artisan community, I'd share some basic communication techniques that are applicable to any visual form of communications, be it web sites, business cards, posters or brochures.

Simple Clarity.
When you are trying to communicate the first thing you need to remember is to be clear. We all have a lot to say about our products, but in that huge rush to get it all out sometimes we go way overboard and lose the ability to communicate clearly. Another way to say this is: if you stood in a room where everyone was shouting at full volume, all you'd get is a headache! Remember when you are creating something, if you cannot READ the text or the reader's eye is being pulled in every direction because so much is going on, your message is lost in a sea of chaos. Limit your use of bold/italic/flashy/color or what have you form of emphasis to only the very most important things.

Look at the ad below. Can you make any sense of this? Everything runs together, there's bold all over it and bullets just for extra chaos. The information is all jumbled together and there really is no logical order to this ad at all. Would you hire this person to sell your home when they can't even communicate what they do to you? How will they market to buyers? Will the flyer for your home look like this jumbled mess?




Now look at this one. You can clearly see what goes together. You get the message quickly. You eye follows a very direct path. All that empty yellow space is doing something ... it's making your eye go to the center and GET the message.


Find a line and stick to it.
Don't jump around with alignments, pick one, right left or center, and stay with it throughout your piece. Center alignment is weakest choice. Right or left always looks stronger and more authoritative. This doesn't just apply to blocks of text, this applies to pictures, too. Nothing should be just thrown on your page or screen. Elements need to line up with other elements, so that our eyes can follow the invisible "paths" created by these alignments and decipher the order in which we should read things. Although the realtor ad up there uses center alignment throughout, the lack of proximity and overuse of bold is overpowering the effect of a unified alignment.

Like things belong together (or the principal of Proximity)
If you saw a man and woman on the street and the man's hand was draped over the woman's shoulder, you likely make the assumption that they are romantically involved or at the very least, friends. Now if you saw the same couple and they were a few feet apart, just talking to each other, would you make the same assumption about their relationship to one another? No, because the physical distances divides the two elements. In the first example, the physical closeness implies a relationship. When you are designing something, group similar elements together and move things that do not have a relationship apart. If you sell more than one kind of product, divide them into logical categories when you present them. Do not mix up your site navigation links with the categories in your store or your "about us" information. If you are creating a business card, the name of the owner, their cell number and their email should all be together, but the business's phone number and fax should be grouped in another location.

In the realtor ad, just adding some space between like groups of text would have clarified the message. (Not to mention taking out some of it. An ad is not the right place to list your entire resume!) People have short attention spans, stick to the essentials. Here's a quick cut and paste redesign. See the difference?


Look at these two cards. The one on the left has something in every corner. Can you make sense in an instant who this card is for and how to contact her? Why is her title and her email in two different places? Your mind has to work much harder to associate the two because they have been placed on opposite sides of the card. Now look at the card on the right. Can you clearly tell who the card is for, how to find him and which number to call if you want to reach the office rather than bother him on his cell?




Of course, there is more to good communication then these few things, however implementing them will elevate your success immediately. If you'd like to learn more, I recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It's not very thick, but contains a WEALTH of valuable knowledge written for the average Jane or Joe.

What's the best tip you have for making yourself heard?