Graphic Design Critique: 4 Small Changes that Turn a Good Design Into a Great One
- Deena Englard
- 14 hours ago
- 4 min read
Weeeeee’re back! With my favorite series - Refine the Design.
Let me lay down the ground rules for how these work:
I took a design that a junior designer made and I then revised it to improve it. But, in order to make sure that no one feels bad, I recreate the design in Frocks in Stock branding with completely new text, making it completely unrecognizable to the original creators.
Because I’ve changed the text, sometimes the context doesn’t always quite make sense. But we’re not focused on the copy for this - we’re just focusing on the design.
Using the text as-is, how can we improve this design?
That’s our goal here.
For today’s design we have an Instagram story that was used for purely branding purposes, not an ad, so the copy is pretty sparse (if this was an ad I would include a list of icons/bullets with services to really showcase HOW this brand can help you).
This design focuses heavily on typography, which is my strong point when it comes to design.
The changes we’re going to make are subtle, but that’s the point. It’s the small details that improve a design and polish it up, taking it from junior to senior level.
Before
This is honestly not bad.
But there are some small changes we can do that will make it even better.
These are the problems I noticed:
The headline is too long to read easily. It needs to either make some of it larger and some of it smaller, or add more paragraph spacing to group ideas together and make it easier to digest.
The subhead is too large to have enough contrast with the headline. The two are blending together too much and it’s not clear enough which one to read first.
The random doodle swashes. I get that they’re there to fill in the empty space but they’re totally random and don’t fit the brand. They’re not really adding anything valuable to the design so they need to go.
The website is too faded, even though it’s not a focal point per the purpose of this design. It needs to draw a bit more attention to it (never hurts to get some extra website visitors ;).
Step 1
First thing I addressed was the headline - I kept to the consistent sizing since that was what the original copywriter had specifically requested (otherwise we might have made one sentence larger and the others smaller), but I increased the paragraph spacing to make each sentence easier to differentiate.
Step 2
I fixed the hierarchy between the headline and subhead. I made the subhead smaller, a slightly lighter font weight, and in white instead of the accent color, to make it clear that this should be read second, not first.
Step 3
Next I worked on the footer. I made the URL slightly bolder and larger, changed it to the accent color, and moved it closer to the logo to group them together visually since they’re connected pieces of information.
Step 4
Lastly, I removed the random doodle line.
But it left us with a problem - now there’s too much empty space in the middle of the page, making the design feel unbalanced.
My first thought was to replace the line with instead an arrow leading down from the subhead to the logo. But that doesn’t really make sense here because it wouldn’t be leading to a call to action so it’s kind of leading you to nothing.
Instead, I tweaked the background image.
I shrank it down, increased the opacity to 60%, and faded it upwards so that it takes up that middle space in the page.
I also added in a slight fade to the bottom of the image (actually by adding a background-colored box ABOVE the image that fades upwards and is at 90% opacity) in order to focus your eye inwards to the center of the page and to make sure the footer is legible despite the image.
I quite like how it follows the story of the text taking you from the beginning - on a solid color where you’re in the problem stage - until you get down to the answer stage, where the image starts emerging. It feels more like you’re going on a journey through the design. And the image helps to draw the eye down the page through the text.
And there you have it!
Our Before and After
What do you think?
Are there any design choices I made that you would do differently?
Do you think it would have been better to fill in the middle spot with an icon list instead of the photo?
Shoot me an email - I’d love to hear from you!
This article took you 4 minutes to read, but it took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to create. If you enjoyed, please consider sharing it with others.
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