The Key Principles for Better Social Media Design

It’s no secret that engaging visual content dominates across social media. Content such as carefully designed brand graphics helps to showcase ideas and products quicker than text-heavy captions. 

As social media platforms become more and more competitive, it is important to stay on top of the latest trends and be reactive with your creative content. Whilst being on top of trends is important, so is understanding your audience and brand and knowing how to translate this within your designs. 

The best way to stand out in an oversaturated space like social media is with good design. Below we have put together our key principles that you should be considering and incorporating into your social media graphics.

Composition 

Composition is essential when it comes to creating social graphics. 

Composition refers to the way in which you arrange and place the different elements on your artboard. The spaces between the design, the arrangement, and how the designs interact with each other.

Composition tips to consider 

• White space can bring a design together but is also important for legibility 
• Direct the eye with leading lines
• Keep important information prominent and place related elements close together 
• Align all your elements – this can be centred aligned or justified, whatever works best for your specific design

The use of Grids

In design, a grid is a system used for creating the base layout. The layouts could be for print or the screen, but the principles of a grid design are the same.

How do grids benefit designers? 

• Grids help to keep your content organised and controlled 
• A strong grid layout can help make type-heavy graphics appear neater and more organised 
• Helps to keep your designs balanced 
• Grids can help to enhance the visual hierarchy within your designs

Typography

Typography brings your design’s message to life, so choose fonts that communicate your brand’s tone of voice and style. 

Top tips for typography

• Bold, distinctive styles can command attention and importance within your designs 
• The viewer’s eyes are drawn to the larger text first, so naturally, the most important part of your copy should be the largest text 
• Too many font styles and sizes can cause viewer confusion and make the graphic less effective 

Brand Consistency 

When looking at popular brands across social media, you will notice a pattern, each brand has a clear and consistent visual presence throughout all its graphics and creative content This is because it helps the viewer recognise and identify a brand when scrolling through social media. 

So to make sure you are being seen by your loyal customers, make sure all the content you are creating for your business account is consistently using your brand’s colours, fonts, logos and brand guidelines across your chosen social media platforms. One way to keep a cohesive feed and achieve this is through the use of brand templates. 

Create standout designs that elevate your social feeds with Peaky Digital 

Here at Peaky Digital, we’re experts when it comes to creating content that captures your brand’s story and elevates your social media feeds. 

Good design not only creates an aesthetically pleasing social platform but it will also enable you to drive conversions, and at Peaky Digital driving sales is the goal behind all our creative campaigns. If you or your business are wondering what benefits you could gain from creative content and design, heading into the new year, why not come to the experts? We provide a boutique service that will obtain you and your brand the best results possible. If you have any questions about how we could help you or what services we offer, please do not hesitate to contact us.