DIY-ers,don’t make these typography mistakes!

May 7

Here are the biggest do’s and dont’s of DIY-ing graphics for Instagram or email. We see these mistakes allllll the time, and they give us the ICK!

I totally understand that most small businesses don’t have the budget for a retained graphic designer. That’s completely fine! Were my business not one servicing graphic design, I would have been in that place for a long time. If that’s you, I support you and I hope this guide is one you can save and revisit later for help whenever you’re DIY-ing graphics for your business.

You probably have heard the marketing concept, “if you confuse, you lose,” which essentially means your customers or clients aren’t going to waste their brain’s limited energy trying to understand unclear marketing messaging. They’ll simply scroll past. But confusing people is totally avoidable if follow these simple typography rules!

This graphic is an example of correctly following basic typography rules (hierarchy, spacing, alignment, and legibility).

The graphic to the left fails to follow the HIERARCHY rule. Hierarchy is your tool for telling customers or clients what’s the most important and what to read FIRST.

Your eye can’t tell what is most important to read first. Contrast that with the correct graphic, on which you by nature immediately read “Your most important heading goes right here” first, then the subheading, then the body.

The graphic to the right fails to follow the SPACING rule. The letter spacing is too wide, which strains your eye and makes the copy harder to read at quick glance. Letter spacing can be helpful for small subheadings, especially when using a sans serif font. But for serif fonts, it’s really only a good idea for major (1-2 word) headings.

The graphic to the left fails to follow the ALIGNMENT rule. There are definitely ways to spice up your graphics by playing with different alignments, but this looks confusing and messy. When in doubt, I recommend sticking with left- or center-aligned copy to keep it simple!

This graphic fails to follow the LEGIBILITY rule. The script font is a bit hard to read, especially when so large, so I would recommend using it only for 1 or 2 important words—certainly not an entire sentence. As a general rule of thumb, use handwritten script fonts sparingly!

I hope these are helpful! Do you have any design mistakes that give you the ICK? Let us know so we can try to avoid them, together 🤣