Most commonly when people think of design for business, they think of branding.  However, design reaches across all elements of your clients’ journey with your business – website, emails, social media, marketing collateral, business cards, packaging, contracts, documents…. you get the idea.

It’s more than just your logo and brand colours. Design supports the everyday communication for  your business.

With the advent of Canva, more and more businesses are taking design into their own hands.  Which is great.  But having access to the tools to design is only half the story.  Understanding how to design well can mean the difference between your business appealing to your potential clients or repelling them.

Luckily there are graphic design principles that can help take your DIY designs from average to amazing.  Let’s look at one of these principles that you can easily use to boost your business appeal – ALIGNMENT.

Alignment

Most people will be familiar with this thanks to auto alignment tools in Canva (and other software such as Adobe & Microsoft programs).  Alignment brings order and structure to a design, and makes it appear more polished.

Centre alignment

With text, this works well for headings but can become difficult to read for large sections of body text.  Also good for giving an element dominance on a page.

Left alignment

Works best for reading, so should be used for larger bodies of text.  

Right alignment

Should also be used carefully, as it can be difficult to read in larger sections of text.

Justified

Creates a neat box-like appearance for paragraphs, and is particularly useful for clarity with multiple columns of text or on busy pages with many elements, such as a newsletter.  It also tends to be more visually pleasing.

Optical alignment

Where alignment tends to become more complicated is when elements are properly aligned, in terms of their borders being inline, however can look misaligned due to the style of the element.  This is most noticable with rounded elements and text with flourishes.  In this situation, it is best to align by eye to create a more visually appealing design.  This may mean nudging the element to the left or right so that it appears aligned.

Alignment applies to more than just text too.  It also refers to any other element on your page, and how it sits in relation to other elements, and to the page itself. Be conscious of how and what each element in your design is anchored to by way of alignment.  This can stop your design from looking arbitrary and messy.

Mixed alignment

That’s not to say you can’t be creative and have fun with alignment.  While it is good practice to keep to 1 or 2 forms of alignment within a single design (i.e. centre for headings, left for body text), there is always the exception to the rule, when done intentionally and with an eye on the overall balance and structure of your design.  The example below uses a mix of left, right and centred alignment, but still maintains a sense of order and visual appeal through a grid layout.

There you have it.  How to incorporate the alignment design principles to boost the appeal of your brand.  Over the next few weeks I will explore more principles that you can easily implement in your designs – to create graphics like a pro designer.

Need some fine tuning of your design skills  in Canva?  I run one-on-one and small group workshops to help business owners just like you feel confident and in control with their designs for everyday business content.  Check out my workshop page.  

Danielle x