Finding a balance between plaintext and graphics

Visualize your dream content for your business and think about the businesses that inspire you. One aspect they all likely have in common with their design and your vision is the balance between plaintext and graphics. To create visually appealing content that won’t overwhelm or lose a client’s interest, and instead lure’s them in, you must find a balance. 

Visually, people are attracted to content that is pleasing to the eyes and that doesn’t feel intimidating. Successfully balancing your copy and visual elements will help you achieve content that your clients enjoy and keep coming back for more. 

Striving for a balanced design extends beyond the aesthetics of your content; balance includes communicating a message in a structural form that provides your clients with harmony and understanding. A balanced design is about creating a strong and healthy relationship between all the elements involved. Therefore, you must consider the plaintext and graphics individually as separate beings and jointly simultaneously. 

The first step to creating your design in a balanced format is to decide on the initial goals of the content. Common objectives for content are usually to ramp up sales, engagement, brand awareness, education, and loyalty. This will be one of the driving forces behind why you execute certain design decisions. 

During your approach to deciding how to balance your design, you should choose a focal element to the content and disperse the others in a leveled and harmonious way. You should consider the text’s fonts and colors, the size of the text and graphics, as well as their positioning with one another. 

 You’ll also want to create a design that is fitting for the medium, otherwise striking a balance isn’t likely to happen. With that said, some content requires more or less visual and text elements depending on the medium. Content that leans more towards text include some blogs, instructions, guides, books, and other similar materials. Meanwhile, social media, product ads, website homepages, apps, and certain blogs tend to be represented by visual elements more often. 

When searching for this delicate balance, you have to be able to recognize when information overload is happening. Too much information and text can go downhill quickly because you’ve 

just thrown your audience into the deep end. With your content and design you have to take your clients hand and guide them through the basics before setting them free. 

Though, you also need to ensure you provide them with enough background in your copy, so they don’t feel lost with a million questions. When viewing new content, a person is more likely to move on from it if they don’t understand, so it’s important to decipher the most essential details and find that sweet spot in between. 

Finding a balance for your graphics are also important because it’s likely what your client will first look at. Graphics and other visual elements are intended to either stand alone and speak for themselves, or to accompany and enhance textual elements. If the content features both copy and graphics, you want to make sure they complement one another and don’t distract clients to keep the elements equal. 

Text has its limitations but including graphics will give your business the potential to show your audience what you’re describing in a way that your text simply can’t. If you don’t need to use words to get your message across, then you probably don’t need it. Your design also shouldn’t describe anything that you can show or use any unnecessary words. 

Although, if your content has too many graphics and not enough text to explain the unknown, you could lose your clients attention spans. When in doubt, remember less is almost always more and don’t repeat your images. If your design begins to feel lopsided, play around with it and turn your graphics into text or your text into a visual element. 

Creating white space is a great and effective way to guarantee every inch of your design is balanced and has a purpose. White space is an area in your design that features nothing to focus on, also known as negative space. This blank area puts your actual content on display for clients to hyper-focus on without overdoing it on the graphics or textual elements. Using empty space in a purposeful way will also make sure the design doesn’t become distracting or difficult to focus on. 

Another aspect to take into consideration is that no two designs are the same, meaning your approach will be different each time. Your design doesn’t have to be symmetrical to portray a balanced design. Asymmetrical designs can often achieve a balanced design just as well if not better than a perfectly symmetrical one. 

As much as some people may wish there was some secret formula or magic ratio to follow when designing balanced content, it simply doesn’t exist. Your company will have to develop and evolve their approach for every single project and medium; but that’s all a part of the fun during the creative process! 

Finding your balance can be a slippery slope; schedule a consultation with VALLETTA and we’ll help your businesses content glide with ease as we discover a balance together! With a little patience and some practice, your business will soon be on its way to developing balanced designs!