Top 12 Graphic Design Tips For Beginners

Do you also struggle to gauge graphic design concepts or wonder why your designs don’t look prim and proper? Well, you are at the right place then. We have curated a list of the best graphic design tips for beginners that will help you create top-class designs. But, before that, let’s know about graphic design. 

Source: FinancesOnline

What is Graphic Designing?

Graphic designing is a craft where professionals create and experiment with visual content to communicate messages. With different page layouts, typography, and the right choice of pictures, visual graphic designers make interactive designs to optimize the user experience. 

If you want to take your career in this direction, a graphic design proposal can be the first step towards getting projects and opportunities that are tailored just for designers like yourself – with all sorts of helpful tips on how best to present them so they’ll get noticed by recruiters.

With 80% of small business owners believing graphic design is very important to the success of their business, it helps to get the graphic designing basics right. 

1. Keep It Simple 

One of the essential graphic designing tips for beginners is not complicating designs and keeping them simple. Not only are overwhelming designs difficult to make, but they are also not easy for the readers to understand. Similarly, when considering website aesthetics, opting for custom web design services can ensure your site remains user-friendly while still capturing your brand’s unique essence.

A minimalist approach is one of the graphic design concepts you will need to follow. Keep the colors under control, balance the visuals and use a minimum amount of text and fonts. 

It’s about achieving a balance between aesthetic appeal and getting your message across clearly and effectively. Achieving the right balance between aesthetic appeal and communicating your message in a crystal clear manner is what a visual graphic designer should aspire to achieve. Especially when it comes to branding it is important to maintain simplicity. You can use free logo design templates to serve as inspiration for your designs.

2. Use An Attractive Color Palette 

Choosing the right color palettes and color schemes is one of the graphic designing basics you must strive to get right. But, choosing one is not always easy. Luckily, most graphic designing tools offer color palettes, and that can make your work easy. Creating your own color palette goes a long way since you can apply it across all of your branding materials. In addition, you can also use Procreate brush software to create custom brushes for custom artwork to use on your blog and other places

All you need to do is browse through the color themes and try them out.

Another way to create color palettes is to extract the colors from an image. You can do this with an in-built editor that comes with your graphic designing tool. As a result, you will have a new color palette to work with you.  

 3. Keep Typography in Control 

Another very important in our list of graphic designing tips for beginners is understanding how to select fonts. New graphic designers time and again receive slack for using bad fonts. We know that it is easy to feel overwhelmed by a large number of fonts online. You will need to figure out a pair of fonts and make your design cohesive and pleasing.

One way to cut out the stress is to use tried and tested pairings. Professional designers also love experimenting with new and beautiful fonts. But, they only use a handful of classic fonts most of the time.

One easy rule is to use one novelty font for headings and a regular classic one for all the text. Another way is to use one font-family and pair it with different weights. For example, a Verdana bold for the heading, a Verdana regular for text blocks, and italics for subheadings.

4. Consider the Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is about emphasizing some elements compared to other elements. In simple terms, it’s how headers are slightly larger than subheadings, and paras are smaller than subheadings. 

Similar is the case with images, graphics, icons, and even colors. When you use these rules, you bring attention to a focal point in the design. This, in turn, creates a visual balance and appeals to the user. But, you will need to work on this as it doesn’t come very easy and needs a lot of practice. 

5. Use Social Media Templates 

Social media is one of the platforms where you need to use graphics. One of the ways to save time is to use pre-designed templates. It can work as a boon for social media managers who have to work on so many different channels with different required sizes. Luckily, there are multiple templates available for every channel and every size. Besides, they are not limited to social media only; you can even use them to make reports, invitations, presentations, infographics, CVs, and more.

6. Leave White Space 

White space means having some empty space without text or elements on it. This is one of the graphic design tips that are harder to master than others. A good way to learn this is to study minimalist design. “Less is more,” and you only require the basics to create a solid design. Another use of white space is known as negative space.This lets you narrate a story using a combination of backgrounds and other elements.

Speaking of backgrounds, it can be beneficial to learn how to use a quality background removal tool. These tools allow designers to remove image backgrounds, giving them more flexibility and control over white space in their designs. By improving one’s skill set in this area, the creative possibilities for harnessing and manipulating white space can be greatly expanded.

7. Use Design Elements

When you use design elements in your project, make it a point to have a cohesive style between them. This applies to all graphic elements, including icons, data widgets, illustrations, vector graphics, animations and even font styles. 

For instance, you can use all-line icons instead of using a mix of line and 3D. You can even use a mixture of squares and rounded corners with other elements to make it look better. You can even break the rules and mix curves with straight lines as long as you keep a cohesive texture and color palette.

8. Optimize Readability

Another great designing tip for beginners is to always make your text easy to read. This is important for how you use overlay text on backgrounds, the colors and fonts you use for headings, and the design’s related text and flow.

You must use the best typeface for your project. The one that will not only give out a clear message but is also easy to read. Do everything in your power to make context easy to read and understand. You must remember that this applies to both the actual text and visualizations like charts and data widgets.

9. Make Good Use of Spacing 

Creating balanced compositions is a result of good spacing. You will need to find the right spaces in margins, paras, lines, words, and even between letters. It will act as a rule to help you align elements and help them complement each other. 

10. Under Color Psychology

Knowing about color palettes and color themes is not enough. First, you will need to know about the art of colors. Then, whenever you choose colors for your designs, consider what color represents in a cultural and emotional sense. 

Designs with strong, bold colors and ones with soft pastel colors have different impacts on the viewer’s mind. Carefully think about the emotion you want to portray and use colors that reflect that.

The colors can be combined in different ways and harmonized to bring out your message in the best manner.  Psychology of color is a skill you must learn if you are planning to use designs in marketing and sales. 

Top Graphic Designing Tools in 2021

1. Penji

Penji is an excellent alternative to hiring a graphic designer if you have ongoing graphic design work. Not only does it save you the effort of choosing a graphic designer, but it also helps eliminate the possibility of getting overcharged.

It is ideal for bloggers who need high-quality custom images and infographics in their posts, marketers who need graphics for Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. It is also a good option for agencies who want to aid their design capabilities without adding staff. 

Features

• It offers great productivity and graphic output
• Has one of the best customer support teams
• Smooth onboarding process 
• Super affordable and no hidden fees 
• Follows a strict designing process for graphic designers 
• No commitment is needed from the client’s end; you can cancel anytime

Pricing 

You can get unlimited graphic designs for a flat monthly fee ($399/month) with no contract. 

2. Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is one of the well-known graphic designing software in the market. It has set the standard for professionally designed logos, artwork, infographics, icons, and much more. You can explore a huge range of options and even make freehand sketches and even tweak vector images. However, you must remember that Adobe Illustrator works with graphics differently and uses formulas instead of pixels for seamless resizing.

Features

• Matches the colors from a photograph with auto-extracting
• Includes 90 million+ images and icons and thousands of fonts
• It lets you manage your projects anywhere
• Infographic data stay updated with the latest statistics 
• Provides tutorials to help you get the most of your marketing efforts

Pricing

Adobe Illustrator offers a seven-day free trial. After that, monthly plans start at $31.49. However, if you choose to make an annual payment, it would cost you $20.99 per month.

3. Affinity Designer

It is an excellent choice for personal projects or new graphic designers. It has one of the most elaborate and intuitive user interfaces, making it a worthy competitor to Adobe Illustrator. Besides, it is ideal for individuals who want a budget-friendly alternative without compromising on its functionality. 

The icing on the cake? Affinity Designer offers a 1,000,000% zoom, making it ideal for the CAD(Computer-Aided Design) realm. Of course, if you feel it is too fine, you are free to set your own levels too. 

The other noteworthy feature is its customizable version history. You can trace back to 8,000 steps, making it an excellent choice when working with clients. This way, you can always stay a step ahead of revisions. 

Features

• Supports a variety of formats, including ICC, CMYK, and RGB
• It lets you achieve consistent branding in your workspace
• Preview edits and blends on the fly
• No subscription fees

Pricing 

Affinity Designer costs just $54.99 on Windows and Mac. You can also use it on your iPad for $21.99. 

4. Procreate

Procreate is a complete art studio made exclusively for iPad and Apple Pencil support. It is a one-time purchase and offers no free trial or version. You can peruse through its dive right into its vast array of templates, fonts, and customizable brushes, to make rock-solid designs. In addition, procreate developers have gone the extra mile to make it user-friendly. 

One of its unique features is its ability to work in 3D. If you’ve wanted to experiment with animation, Procreate serves as a great starting point. However, with so many tools, it can be overwhelming for beginners. 

Features

• Offers 200 customizable brushes
• Provides an intuitive selection of complementary colors and ColorDrop tool for fill
• It helps you streamline image management for creating the perfect look
• One time purchase and no in-app purchases 

Pricing 

Procreate is available for US $9.99 as a lifetime purchase. 

5. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a popular graphic design tool among designers and supports beginners to pros with a user-friendly interface and multiple tutorials. It puts you in control and lets you control everything from Canvas size to the artistic filter. 

Like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop also offers a seven-day free trial. The trial for Photoshop includes a whopping 100 GB of cloud storage, and Lightroom includes 1 TB. 

Features

• Includes several eye-catching effects, including Keith Haring brushes
• It lets you focus on presenting your message and cut out distractions  
• Streamlines workflow with batch operations and automation scripts

Pricing 

You can purchase it for $20.99/mo and use it on your desktop and iPad. The second choice is to use an all apps plan for$52.99/mo. It includes 20+ Adobe desktop and mobile apps, including Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and Acrobat.

6. Canva 

Canva is an all-around solution for creating social media graphics, infographics, web design, carousels, or T-shirts. It uses an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and is a boon for those with no experience in graphic design. 

It offers a huge selection of images, templates, backgrounds, and fonts to up your designing game. Unfortunately, while Canva offers many items for free, many of the images require in-app purchases.

Canva can easily blend with a broad range of industries, thanks to its comprehensive and top-notch template gallery. 

Features

• User-friendly interface to facilitate graphic designing 
• It makes it easy to share projects with team folders and offers real-time collaboration

Pricing 

A Canva Pro account can be availed at just $12.99/ month or $119.99 a year. You can even contact the team for a customized plan. 

7. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is much more than just an image editing software. It is also a leading GNU image manipulation program and vector illustration software. Besides, it is highly customizable and user-friendly. Since it is built on HTML, it is compatible with most platforms. Gravit Designer offers 500 MB of cloud storage with the free plan and unlimited storage with the pro version.

With the pro version, you can even work with touch-enabled devices and work offline. The pro plan also lets you export up to 300 dpi (dots per inch), making it more useful if you do print work. 

Features

• Works on all platforms and supports Apple Pencil and touch-enabled devices
• Includes dark theme and support for 14 languages
• Offers comprehensive documentation and helpful tips
• It comes with premade design assets, fonts, and POD templates

Pricing 

Gravit designer offers a free version. If you want advanced features you can try out its Pro version. Once the free trial ends, you will need to pay $48.79 per feature, to use it.

8. Pixlr

Pixlr is an image editing web app that can fulfill your graphic designing tip. You can use it on your browser, desktop, or mobile. 

It supports several file formats and also offers a free trial and free version. Unfortunately, the free version is quite ad-heavy.

Features

• Easy drag-and-drop interface and offers an excellent image design experience.
• Includes professional-looking templates and offers collage options, ads in a variety of sizes, flyers, and business cards
• It lets you design Facebook banners, Pinterest pins, and LinkedIn company posts, among others.

Pricing 

Pixlr pricing starts at $4.9 per month. You can also buy the creative pack at $14.99 per month.

9. Figma

Figma offers a host of features and an intuitive interface that lets you gauge graphic designing concepts with ease. It also offers free unlimited cloud storage, making it a favorite among designers. 

Besides, it offers a great collection of vector graphics and other tools. However, if you want to invite participants to private projects, you will need to upgrade to its professional plan or share a link for collaboration.

Figma gives businesses a lot of leverage with customization, particularly at the organization level. Moreover, it lets you create and administer private plugins that make it easy to control access. 

Features

• Offers hundreds of freebies to enhance your work, including shapes, fonts, and colors
• Provides unlimited cloud storage and lets you save drafts for free

Pricing 

Figma is available at $12 per editor/month when billed annually. You can also buy it for $15/month. 

10. Sketch 

The sketch is a Mac-only vector editing software that lets you manage your workflows and make excellent designs. It is user-friendly and offers a fun experience to all users. The USP (unique selling point of the software is its 24/7 customer support and wide range of plugins.

Features

• It gets you up and running quickly without the distractions
• Makes it easy to create mobile interfaces
• Lets you create temporary project access with freelancers

Pricing 

Sketch pricing starts at $9.00 per month. Unfortunately, it does not offer a free version or trial.

11. Renderforest Graphic Maker

Renderforest Graphic Maker is an outstanding branding tool that helps create professional designs in a few minutes.

One does not need any design skills or prior experience. The templates are put together so well, that no matter the process, the end result is going to be proficient.

The expanding library offers to choose stock images or upload personal ones, customize the text from the large selection of fonts, change the size of the document, etc. 

The three sections (Social Media, Printables, Presentations) help to orientate and start working on a template that the chosen project needs.

Features

• Professional Graphic Templates
• Three expanding sections to choose from (Social Media, Printables, Presentations)
• A variety of size options (Whether you need it for an Insta story, Facebook post, etc.)
• Large selection of customizable color palettes, sizes, icons, and images
• Expanding icons library
• Large stock image library and a media library for saved native files
• Editor Tips
• Download and Link Sharing Options
• Light and Dark Modes

Pricing 

Renderforest offers both free and paid options.

12. Glorify

Glorify is an easy-to-use yet powerful graphic design tool that allows you to plan, design, launch and analyze all your big ideas in one place. It is a life saver for if you’re looking to easily create high-quality images without the need for pricey outsourcing . 

Glorify makes design accessible to all. Entrepreneurs, marketers, agency owners, designers and just about any busy professional can use this tool to create aesthetic images that convert. 

It is also super useful to Ecommerce enthusiasts who need a simple, quick solution to make their products stand out in a saturated market. With simple tools for beginners and advanced features for designers, Glorify provides a great alternative to other design tools out there. 

Features

• Has thousands of fully customizable ready-made templates
• Offers fully customizable 3D mockups and mockup scenes 
• Has branding tools such as a logo maker, brand kits and template bundles
• Collaborative features and workspaces make it ideal for teams
• Has an ambitious roadmap with several future features lined up
• Has amazing customer support 

Pricing:

Glorify offers a free plan for those just getting started. Monthly subscriptions to their Pro and Business plans cost $39.99 and $99.99 respectively. However, if you choose either plan as a yearly subscription, you will get a 25% discount. 

Wrapping Up 

These were some of the graphic designing tips for beginners that can come in handy. An easy attitude, taking the help of tutorials, and these tips will help you become a great graphic designer. You can use any of the tools mentioned above to ace your skills and build your graphic design tips. 

Are you still confused regarding selecting the right fit for your organization? Then, schedule a free demo with us today!

Rohit Rajpal

Rohit Rajpal is an accomplished writer and data enthusiast passionate about unraveling the intricacies of information and data. With a deep understanding of the subject matter, Rohit strives to simplify complex concepts and make them accessible to readers. Rohit’s expertise in the field and his knack for clear and concise communication make his blog an invaluable resource for those seeking clarity in the data-driven world.