As a non-designer, you might find your designs don’t look as polished and professional as you’d hope for. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back and are here to give you tips on how to become better.

Below, we’ve put together 7 of the best graphic design tips and tricks to help you create better-looking designs in no time — even without any design experience.

Tip #1: Keep it simple.
The no. 1 and most important design tip for non-designers and beginner designers is to keep it simple. There’s nothing worse than an overwhelming design that is difficult to understand.

To keep things simple, tap into your inner minimalist. Use the minimum amount of text and fonts, keep the colors under control and the visuals balanced.


Take a look at the flyer template below.

A simple and colorful flyer for an art gallery.
It’s simple, yet eye-catching. Even though there aren’t a ton of elements used, a lively background and bold fonts do the trick.

The secret to good design is not to stuff as many graphics and elements into your design as possible.

It’s achieving a balance between aesthetic appeal, and getting your message across clearly and effectively.

Tip #2: Use a cohesive color palette.
Color palettes and color schemes are as important as the message you want to relay with your design. Choosing the perfect color combination though isn’t always easy.

Thankfully, ready to use color palettes are easy to come by. Visme has a color theme picker as part of your editing tools. Simply browse through the color themes and try them out.

A GIF that shows how to change the color scheme of an infographic inside the Visme editor.
A great way to create color palettes is to extract the colors from an image. You can do this inside your Visme editor by clicking on the color picker and then the plus sign. Upload your image and you’ll have a new color palette to work with.

For more detailed color palette extraction, we recommend you use Adobe Color, a website that gives you several color palettes from any image.

Tip #3: Keep the typography under control.
The art of selecting fonts has a bad rep in the world of design for non-designers. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the choice of different fonts available online.

Not only that, you have to know how to pair fonts together in a design to make it look cohesive and pleasing.

A great way to bypass the stress of trying out a million combinations is to use tried and tested pairings. Professional designers also love new and beautiful fonts but if you ask them, they’ll tell you that they only use a handful of classic fonts most of the time.A collage of four different font pairings.

One easy to follow rule-of-thumb if you want to make your pairings with different fonts is to use one novelty font for headings and a regular classic one for all the text. Below is a great resource to save you time when pairing fonts, a collection and tried and tested combinations for different occasions.

You can even use just one font family and create a pairing of its different weights. For example a Montserrat bold for the heading, a Montserrat regular for text blocks and italics for subheadings.

Tip #4: Consider the visual hierarchy.
Visual hierarchy is all about giving visual importance to some elements over others. In simple terms, it’s how headers are larger than subheadings, and these in turn are larger than a box of text.


The same applies to images, graphics, icons and even colors. When you use visual hierarchy rules, you bring attention to a focal point in the design. This creates a visual balance that then starts a visual flow of information for the viewer.

Visual hierarchy is a skill that comes easy for some people but for others, it needs to be learned. Our blog has a great article to help you understand visual hierarchy better.

Tip #5: Save time with social media templates.
Social media is one of the mediums where graphics need to be created constantly and regularly. There is no better way to save time than to use pre-designed templates.

Social media managers have to work on so many different channels with different required sizes. Thankfully there are templates available for every channel and every size.

social media image sizes - visme templates
Inside Visme, you can search for either a social channel, a type or a topic to find the templates you need.

Templates aren’t just available for social media, though. Visme offers templates for presentations, infographics, reports, invitations, CVs and more.

Tip #6: Always use white space.
White space isn’t exactly “white”. What white space means is that there is an empty space without text or elements on it.

It’s the area of the design where it “breathes”. This is one of the design techniques that is harder to master than others.

A good way to learn how to use white space is to study minimalist design. This is a movement that centers on the idea that “less is more” and you only need the bare necessities on a graphic.

Another use of white space is called negative space. This is a technique in which empty spaces tell more of a story than they would in the background or between other elements.

Tip #7: Use cohesive design elements.
When you add design elements to your project, they must have a cohesive style between them. This applies to all graphic elements; from icons to data widgets, illustrations, animations and even font styles.

For example, use all line icons instead of a mix of line and 3D.

infographic icons - stick to a single style
Mix squares with rounded corners with other curved elements. Straight angled shapes with straight lines. Alternatively, break the rules and mix curves with straight lines as long as you keep a cohesive texture and color palette

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