Professional graphic design tends toward the boring. Think of your standard corporate project; driven by function, these projects pare away the creativity in favor of clarity, but the fact is, you can have both. When reimagined by graphic design students, business reports can be lively. So where do they lose their imagination?
If you want to improve your business’s graphic design projects, the best way to give them a boost is to look beyond your normal domain. These four unusual sources of inspiration will give your work the boost it needs to attract interest and engage readers and viewers.
Inspect Infographics
Infographics gained popularity in the graphic design world a few years ago as a way to share information in an interactive format, combined with bright colors and a visually interesting format. They’re also condensed, compared to a lot of professional content. By considering how infographics function and how they use space to create flow between data points within a small space.
Consider Comics
Comics have been a popular format for print media for decades, and their use of bold images and simple text make them attractive even to reluctant readers and young children. In a professional setting, though, consider how you can use comic book template to present an idea or to block out space on a webpage, rather than using a more traditional grid. It’s also worth considering how the conversational tone of comic books might engage readers or guide them through a complex process.
Transform Your Typeface
Choosing a clear, easy to ready font is an important part of good graphic design; if readers have to squint to make out your text, then you’ve failed at the most basic level. Despite this, using interesting and innovative fonts can help make your designs more exciting and can help simple bits of text communicate at a deeper level. The key is to use these fonts in small, meaning-rich moments, such as the bubble letter notebooks designed by Kate Moross or Elias Hanzer’s Phase project, which uses modular elements to create new type styles. Even mundane typefaces can help your projects shed their corporatized, stiff image in favor of something more dynamic.
Reference The Retro
Classic ideas always come around again, so why not try to apply retro graphic design ideas to modern projects? Old advertisements, greeting cards, and magazines can all inform nostalgic projects, as well as pairing well with newer elements to demonstrate evolution and growth. Every graphic designer should have a clear sense of where their own aesthetic stems from and who defined the field in the past; referencing classic design work can help shape that perspective.
Don’t let current trends keep you from exploring the limits of graphic design, whether you’re creating a pamphlet or building a website. Thinking beyond the trend will help you find the best style for your message and get out of that rut. Because when your website or poster looks like what everyone else is doing, are you really designing at all? At that point, it’s all just a template – and you can do better.