Spruce up your Hair, Beauty or Fitness brand with clever design

There are lots of ways to talk about composition. Everyone appreciates something that looks good. Whether you consciously know it or not, the difference between a well thought out design and a poorly thought out design can make a world of difference.

Design is part of you. Running a business yourself, you are always on the go. If you have a hair and beauty business, you are being creative on the job. And that’s the same for nail artists, hair artists or makeup artists. If you’re a freelancer, you may even do all your brand design yourself. Either way, I think it makes you pretty super duper!

Align Your Elements: Symmetric and Asymmetric

Sometimes a design that appears unaligned is actually carefully thought out. It doesn’t always work if everything is in a perfect line. You have to be aware of the impact you want to make and communicate that through your design work.

Imagine a seesaw with two children the same size either end – this is balanced. Now if one child gets off and an adult takes their place, the seesaw becomes unbalanced. To describe asymmetrical design, take the adult and sit them further up the seesaw nearer the middle. The seesaw will now be balanced in theory and although the main element (the adult) is off centre, it can still be aesthetically pleasing. Symmetry is usually seen as beautiful and harmonised. However, it can also be seen as static and dull. Asymmetry tends to be more interesting and dynamic, despite it not being perfectly aligned.

Divide Your Design Into Thirds

The rule of thirds means you divide what you’re working with into 9 equal sections. You can create a grid layer while you are working on your project or just imagine it. By placing elements at these spots you are creating a more aesthetic image for the viewer. These frames serve as guidelines as to where you should place subjects of interest in your image, either at the intersections or along the lines.Here’s an example I have cut up into thirds from an Adobe Spark template… everything is nicely placed to a perfect balance and you instantly know what the content is about. You have your main element, secondary and tertiary element with the “finer” print.

Don’t always fill the space

Design isn’t about filling up all the space you have. Relate to your brand, is your brand busy or is it short and sweet… like this graphic of a fresh tangerine?

Even though this next design is simple, it’s still busy so it takes a moment to read its message. But even so, the design works well because you want to know what it says, so it made you look boo!

Find the focus and direct the eyes of your viewer

Think colour, contrast, position. A dominant element creates an entry point into your design. It suggests where the viewer should look first. Without a dominant element, a viewer may find it difficult to organise the visual information in front of them. You give elements different visual weights based on their colour, size, shape, and a number of other factors that might draw attention. When referring to weight in design we mean the darker an element is, the larger or busier it is the more it weighs.

You can create 3 levels of dominance in your work:

Dominant: The element with the most visual weight

Sub-Dominant: The elements of secondary emphasis that will become the middle ground in your composition.

Subordinate: The elements with tertiary emphasis, given the least visual weight.

Arrows and other visual cues will be understood more often than written directions alone. Be careful with overdoing dominance, keeping just one or two elements the main focus is what to aim for. Of course, you want to make sure the other elements can still be comfortably taken in by the viewer.

Contrast

One of the most important things in design is contrast. Without it your viewer’s eye would struggle to tell where the attention is needed. You may use one shape to frame another shape, so that it stands out. You have heard of complementary colours, but what about complementary design? One key part of a successful and effective composition is taking the time to carefully and purposefully select each element of your design to work together as a whole. Keeping the balance right with contrast doesn’t just stop at colours.

Proximity

Is all about using visual space to show relationships in your content. In practice, it’s pretty simple – all you need to do is make sure that related items are grouped together. Groups that are not related to each other should be separated in order to visually emphasise their lack of relationship. All in all, this makes your work easier to understand at a glance, whether it’s pure text or something more visual.

So to round up this series on marketing design for your hair or beauty business, we have covered the importance of personality, composition and consistency specifically in creative design. You need to think about design with your social media posts, with your website, your advertising and even your workspace (if you have one). Staying consistent with the image you give your brand plays an important part in so many aspects of running your own business. Drop some comments below and show off your design work or tag us in @salongolduk on Instagram.