Great design tips
Here are some tips for designing great print pieces by CMU's senior graphic designer Amy Gouin.
Keep it clean. It’s tempting to crowd designs with different fonts, lots of photos and lots of copy. Resist the urge to cram. Pare down your design to a few elements, like headlines, photos and written copy to create a focal point.Use the rule of odds. The rule of odds says that an odd number of items looks better than an even number – for example, three elements are better than four.
Be choosy. Choose one or two big photos to feature instead of five or six small photos.
Get colorful. CMU’s color palette offers plenty of warm, friendly tones to choose from. Select a couple of eye-catching, complementary colors and get creative!
Don’t go font crazy. Don’t use too many different fonts. This creates confusion in your design. Check out our graphic standards for a list of approved fonts. And avoid using text with all capital letters – lowercase letters are much more easy to read.
Don’t justify. Don’t justify your text – it’s too hard to read and makes holes in your text that you can drive a truck through! Instead, make sure text is flush to the left and ragged on the right for easy reading. Avoid centering text and make columns easy to read by limiting width.