I’m horrible at design.
I have the artistic skills of a toddler, despite being able to use most of the tools that professionals use for creating images!
One day I received feedback from someone in the form of criticism on how my fonts didn’t go together, and my colors were completely arbitrary…while I was dejected, I knew feedback like this was a long time coming : (
What to do?
Graphic designers are expensive, and I’m no artist, but knowing how to use a lot of the tools, and being aware of so many short cuts, I was confident I could figure out a quick way to stop struggling with the fonts and color scheme of my site.
Here’s what I found...
The best font to use….is one that’s easy to read. That’s it. See this article for the psychology that backs this statement.
Try Arial, Helvetica, or Georgia, keep it simple, fancy fonts take people longer to read, and increase the likelihood they’ll abandon your website.
The color scheme is a little bit more complex, but there are easy tools to figure it all out. I was the worst for a while with my colors, I changed the color of my logo everytime I opened it up to place it somewhere on my site!
So the first thing I STOPPED doing, was changing colors often, people need consistency to feel trust.
Next, I got myself color coordinated with this tool from Adobe.
You almost can’t go wrong using the sliders with Adobe Kuler to find a scheme that work for your links, outlines, and accents. Pick something, copy down the color codes, and don’t change them!
That’s it!
I tell my users when I give them the “no filler” description of what you get when you work with me, is that I am not afraid to work with graphics, but I have no artistic skills, and you’ll be best served by a dedicated graphic designer.
While I still say something similar today, I feel a whole lot more confident helping others with their colors, and I hope after reading this, so can you!
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I sincerely hope this e-mail was useful, and want to know about it if it wasn’t, just hit reply!
PS. If you’re in the north east like me, getting blasted by snow and ice, stay warm, stay safe!
-r
