Art & Design Graphic Design

Rookie Design Mistakes I’ve Made

Everyone is a rookie at some point. And there will always be someone who has more experience than you. There are some design mistakes we can make, though, that automatically make us look like a rookie. I’ve made all of the following. Don’t be like me. Avoid making these five rookie mistakes.

One: Forgetting to proofread your project before production.
We get so excited to be ending a project and we just want to see the finished result. We rush through and forget to proofread. This leads to silly grammatical errors that make us cringe. All this can be avoided by simply proofreading, no matter how much we want to rip our hair out while doing so.

Two: Good design, poor production quality.
The brochure has turned out amazing. The design is flawless and all you have to do is present the draft to the client. We were so excited to show them that we cut the paper jagged and smudged the ink. A good design, wasted. I always had an issue with this in school. I was always in a rush and it made no sense. Because I was never happy with the end result. Take the time to make the production as clean and polished as the actual design.

Three: Decorative fonts that take away from the design.
There are so many fonts and you can get carried away. When I was a teenager, I was in love with Papyrus and used it on everything. I cringe thinking that I even used it on one of my portfolios while finishing school. Be careful and choose your fonts carefully. Don’t choose too many and choose ones that are appropriate for your audience.

Four: Widow and Orphan type.
Do you ever realize how jarring it is when you are reading a paragraph and the last line only has one word? That is considered having an orphan or widow. Paragraphs containing lines with more that one or two words have a better flow to them. You can change the words in the paragraph or you can do something as simple as increasing or decreasing the space between letters or words.

Five: Unedited images.
Deadlines are inevitable. And it may seem like the best choice to simply forgo editing images when you’re in a bind. Even the most seemingly high resolution photo may need adjustments to its coloring. Adjusting the RGB color channels in Photoshop is one of my go-to quick fixes that makes so much of a difference.

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