Hi all! This is Jillian, Design Intern here at Punchmark, and for this week’s Design Talk I want to discuss designing for business.

Have you ever looked at an infographic or a chart, or even visited a website, and they just...made you more confused? Some of them read like subway maps with the amount of color and chaos and different directions they take the user. Other times, the information on a website is not readily available, and the user has to poke around on all of the pages just to find the bit of information they are searching for. 


Far too often infographics, charts and websites are designed with color and fancy typography in mind, but forget key elements that help user experience (UX): white space, typography, color scheme.

White space: don’t crowd the page with as much information as you can. It’s been proven that if there is too much information on a single page, the user doesn’t follow it all and loses interest. Make sure the type and images on a page have room to BREATHE. 


Typography: Display typefaces should reflect the mood or mission of the company or the information displayed. For example the title of Vogue. Think about what makes this typeface successful? It’s a classy serif typeface that has stood the test of time, and reflects a fashion magazine that wants to evoke a sense of classiness and timelessness. It’s iconic. When choosing a display type for your company, or page, it should also pair well with the body text type, and not clash awkwardly or be too similar. 

Typically when writing information for the body text, it’s best to use a sans serif font. The body text is smaller, and if a type is used that has serifs or is more fancy in strokes, it’s harder to discern between letters and words in a block of text. San serifs are easier to read at smaller sizes, it's all about the information presented. If you can’t read it, then you’ll lose interest in the information. Readability (the WANT to read) and legibility (the ABILITY to read) are heavily affected by this. 


Color scheme: Don’t use all of the colors of the rainbow. Choose between three to four colors that look appropriately together. Black and white should be two of them. If you look at Punchmark’s website, the colors used are dark blue, white, gray, and light blue. They complement each other, while the white space helps with readability.