Every day, we visit one or two websites; you’re no exception. One thing that attracts our eyes the most while visiting any website is graphics, isn’t it? An appealing graphic design helps a company become a brand, and a bad design can create a negative connotation for the company. A bad graphic design can ruin any project and make a wrong impression in front of target customers. Companies hire graphic designers to develop eye-captivating website designs to outperform competitors and establish a brand. However, sometimes graphic designers create graphics that are not apt to website requirements or guidelines, which hurts people's eyes, and ultimately, they exit the website in seconds.
In this guide, we will walk you through 10 bad graphic design examples and ways to fix them. Let’s dive in.
1. Cluttered Design
There are many websites, and every website has ordered visually appealing designs. As you can see in the image mentioned below, the image lacks a visual order, increasing cognitive load as users struggle to identify the visual landscape and understand which part is essential.
How to fix: To fix this bad graphic design, you must remove unnecessary elements from the graphics to allow the significant parts to stand out.
2. Inconsistencies in UI
Inconsistent UI design is one of the most irritating kinds of bad graphic design. An inconsistent design can confuse and frustrate users while visiting the website. This happens when the graphic designers do not follow a consistent style throughout the product or website, as shown in the example below.
How to fix: To ensure the design in the website or logo is consistent, it is crucial to maintain a consistent design language. This includes a standardized set of elements like typography, color, iconography, etc.
3. Bad Typography Hierarchy
Typography means designing how the text and color will appear on the website. You should know that text on the web is not the same as text in the book. A page with no typography hierarchy can make visitors feel intimidated and bored. An unstructured typography makes it difficult to read text on the website. Look at the image below.
How to fix: Graphic designers must create a hierarchical typography, which means they can use two typefaces of different sizes, weights, and styles to differentiate heading, body copy, and text elements.
4. Confusing Iconography
You must have seen icons on websites, such as social media icons used for navigation. The goal of icons is to help users recognize what an icon represents. Some websites contain abstract or metaphorical icons, which confuse users to navigate through the website, as you can see in the image below.
How to fix: Always go with universal icons instantly recognizable to users. Even if you use icons that do not have universal meaning attached to them, use labels to prevent confusion.
5. Poor Alignment
Bad alignment can make a big difference in overall graphic design. It is true because a poor alignment can create a page that feels unpolished, cultured, and unfinished and won’t catch users' attention well. The wrong boards and edges in the design will not be visually appealing to users, and they choose to leave the website.
How to fix: Fixing alignment in graphic design is pretty simple. You can use a grid to place elements within your design to establish a proper alignment. Also, forget not to use a baseline grid as well.
6. Hollow Imagery
Images and photos play a crucial role in overall graphic design. People often use images that are irrelevant to the content and fail to convey the ideas and concepts of the page. Unrelated images confuse users with your content as they fail to convey the real meaning.
How to fix: You can fix this issue by taking relevant images directly tied to your page’s content. For example, cute puppy pictures are great, but only if your content is about puppies.
7. No Harmony In White Spacing
A design with poor whitespace can appear disharmonious. Some graphic designs you might have encountered while visiting websites have no proper white spacing. This creates confusion in reading the text and does not appeal to the information, ultimately leading to a bad user experience.
How to fix: You can balance the content blocks with white space to make the information appealing and readable. Keep your visitors happy by maintaining adequate white spacing.
8. Poor Color Combination
Color is something that gives life to any graphic. However, the reality is that graphic designers end up using the wrong color combination, which neither appeals to the eyes nor makes text readable. The wrong colors fail to draw users' attention to the design.
How to fix: You can fix this issue by understanding color psychology and color trends. Use colors based on the brand name, products, and services it offers to create a long-lasting impact on users.
9. Poor Form Design
There are many websites whose interface is difficult to use, lacks appeal, and does not depict any core principle of visual communication. Such websites contain poor form design, where you will see too many colors and texts that don’t fit together. This makes it hard for users to understand.
How to fix: This issue can be solved by keeping the form as short as possible. Make the submit button highly visible and break the long form into smaller pages.
10. Wrong Text And Graphic Placement
Be it icons, text, or an image, placement is crucial to make the graphic look appealing. The blunder made in the graphics is that designers combine text and graphics, which does not look aesthetically appealing for users to read a word if the image does not appear ultimately.
How to fix: Whatever graphic you’re creating, make sure the fonts, photos, and text should look great together in the right composition and not separately.
To Sum Up
As a business, if you’re looking for the best graphic design company in Boston, Original Foster Design is your one-stop destination. We offer graphic design services in print media, websites, logos, posters, flyers, banners, social media templates, corporate branding, t-shirts, etc. Connect with us today.