8 Signs of a Great Graphic Design that Actually Works

Graphic design can be tough to get right. With all of the information available on the internet, it can be hard to tell whether you’ve created a successful design or a massive flop. Good graphic design, at its core, communicates. It communicates information, feelings, sensations, values, and many other important things. For businesses, it often communicates key elements of brand imagery that allow their brand to be marketable to their client market. If you want to be more confident in the quality of your design, there are a handful of things that can be good indicators of whether or not your design accomplishes its goal. With that in mind, below are 8 common indicators of great, highly functional graphic design.

1. Clear Focal Point

Because design is so often about good communication, having the central focus of your design clearly outlined is extremely important. If your design doesn’t have a clear focal point, it’s a bit like giving a speech without ever getting to your main point. Sure, you communicated some things — but were they the right things? Make sure that your viewers and users are able to walk away with a clear, actionable takeaway.

2. Balance

Balance in a design — ensuring that everything connects at appropriate points and leads the viewer to the intended focal point — is key to professional design. Most great graphic design software has the ability to automatically and precisely align elements. This is a feature that should almost always be utilized.

3. Typography

Font usage determines quite a lot in what you’re communicating in your design. The right font can make a design extremely successful in your desired communication. If the text are solely the words chosen to communicate, then the font is how you chose to say it. They determine the reader’s internal voice when they read your copy — a bold font will create a “loud” effect, while a slim font will be “quiet.” In addition, there are thousands of other possible emotions and ideas that can be communicated through the right font choice.

4. No Crowding, Please

Great design makes proper use of negative space. Without negative space, there can be no clear focus or emphasis in design. Make sure that you don’t get trigger-happy with your design elements and overcrowd the surface you are working on. Leave some space for your design to breathe, and it will thank you.

5. Draws Out Emotion

Fonts, color, imagery, movement, and a handful of other design elements have the potential to draw out the right kind of emotion from a viewer when executed properly. Great design is immediately and precisely impactful. It knows the impact it’s trying to make and makes it without confusion or conflicting ideas.

6. On-Brand

When you see an Apple ad, you know who it’s from without needing to see the logo. That’s because Apple has mastered simple, consistent brand imagery across all of their channels and touchpoints. This consistency and clarity of message and persona allows them to carry significant weight in the marketplace. Make sure that your design is consistent — don’t sacrifice clarity in the name of variety.

7. Aware of Trends Without Conforming Completely

Good brand design is often timeless by necessity — it should last through trends and fads in order to get the best value out of the product. Other design styles should make use of trends with discernment. Trends can often inform the designer of what’s going on in culture that is resonating with audiences. This can be a powerful tool indeed. However, it’s important to recognize what trends fit in a particular context.

8. Follows the Brief

Good graphic design is also design that follows the customers’s or creative director’s intentions. It is the job of a creative director to give vision an overall guidance for the way a graphic is designed. A good designer should be able to take intangible, abstract qualities and make them tangible.