photo from Mika Baumester, unsplash.com

I’m a words person. I’ve tried to avoid design in my work, but now school has forced me to learn InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Canva. Before public relations design, I didn’t know how important design was to an organization: it matters. Design tells the story of an organization, it captures attention and gives personality.

Without good design, your organization’s copy can never be effective—it simply won’t be seen. At first this was discouraging, but now it’s motivating. For me to be a better writer, I need to be a better designer.

Before taking public relations design, I didn’t recognize the importance of design. I’ve learned a lot. While I’ve learned how to use platforms I hadn’t used before, I also learned principles to apply to design—broadening my perspective. Here’s what I learned:

Don’t reinvent the wheel

No need to completely redesign every time! Sometimes creating a template will guide you through the design process. It’s important to not overcomplicate your designs or make them too ambitious.

Start small and build your design from the foundation (who are you designing for? Why are you designing?) and finish with the smallest detail (excuse me, is that extra space?).

Breaking into simple parts and not making design hard for yourself will help you slowly build the tools to be an effective designer for whatever client you have.

Your first idea will never be your best idea

Unfortunately, you may need several ideas before getting one to stick. I know that my first idea is usually pretty basic, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. I’m not afraid to design and look at something unpublishable. You have to design something that’s not too great before you get the design you were looking for.

Don’t be scared to be imperfect because idea 9 is just around the corner!

Stick to a theme: know your audience, purpose, colors and fonts before you start

When I start my design I chose a color palette and fonts before starting. And before that, I chose the purpose and audience.

It’s important to know you are biased toward your own preferences so make sure you know your audience’s preferences before diving in.

I also think it’s easier to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish with your design so you don’t end up with a sleek design that doesn’t mean anything to your audience.

Purpose and audience will trump design. Design is the tool to reach the audience and fulfill the purpose so be picky with your fonts and colors and make sure your audience will like them too!

Learn how to learn

A lot of design comes from teaching yourself. I used resources like LinkedIn Learning, YouTube and the Adobe tutorials.

It applies to everything, but knowing how to teach yourself new things is a great way to accomplish anything in life. Learn how to build a website, build code or design a state of the art newsletter (or a pretty good one at least).

Remember design is one of many communications tools!

It helps people visualize your brand and connect with it on a different level. Design is powerful, but it’s not unlimited. Use it like a tool to communicate effectively and let design serve you.

Even for those of us that consider ourselves writers—we can benefit from understanding good design principles. Design elevates writing and purpose elevates both. Write, design or both—but be sure to always keep your content purpose driven for the correct audience. And I’ll work on becoming a more well rounded communicator by using my new tool: design.