Graphic Design Tips for Snapshots

If you've learned about Snapshots and want to design one yourself, here are some  design tips, borrowed from graphic designers, that will help you design a snapshot that is effective visually, and which will easily capture and hold the attention of others.  

 

1. Keep it simple and uncluttered. 


2. Limit your colour choices.  Use colours that ‘go together’ (colour harmony).   Pick colour scheme based on your logo, or a key photo in the snapshot.  (see below)


3. Limit the number of fonts to 2. Use contrasting fonts and stay away from frilly fonts. Generally use serif for body, non-serif for heading.


4. Use white space effectively.


5. Use simple short text, keep it away from the edges.


6. Use an invisible grid. (align sections and elements in the design)


7. Use borders, shadows, contrast, complementary colours to draw special attention to something.


8. Use the right kind of figure/graph.


There are many great resources to learn more about design, and of course, turn to professional support to produce something polished.

 

More about colours

It is really hard to match colours with your eye.   It is better to find the code. If you don’t know it, you can use a program on the internet.  For instance, you can upload an image to www.colorcodepicker.com and use the curser to move over your image to reveal the colour codes.


Once you have identified your colour(s) you can set the colour to them in your design program.   If you want to learn about what additional colours may go well with this colour scheme, you can easily find this on-line with a program like:  http://www.color-hex.com/  These programs will show you what colours work well with this colour (shade and tint variations, complementary colours, etc.) and give you the code for those colours.


If you think you may print the snapshot out in black and white, print drafts out to see how they look.  Sections that stand out in colour may not standout in black or white.  Adjust one of the colour’s stint or shade to fix this.

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