Develop custom graphics

1. Select a graphic design tool to use that suits your team's level of graphic design experience.

Drag and drop tools like Canva, Easil, PicMonkey, and Stencil are useful for teams who lack professional design experience. The easy-to-use interface on platforms like these makes it simple to design and resize graphics for various marketing channels. If your team has its own graphic designer, they will likely use more advanced software like Adobe Illustrator, Gravit Designer, or Affinity Designer, which allows for complete customization and creativity when designing custom graphics completely from scratch.

2. Consult your brand's style guide to make sure all custom graphics stay on-brand.

Consider your brand’s color palette, typeface, spacing and styling guidelines, and your brand voice for any text that will be added to your custom graphics. Aligning every piece of content with your brand identity will help create a cohesive feel that makes it easy for your audience to recognize your content.

3. Define an objective for each custom graphic you plan to use in your marketing or advertising. Consider where this graphic will appear and what purpose it will serve for your audience.

For example, you might create custom graphics for: A brand logo Visual elements to add to blog posts or web pages Visual elements to add to email campaigns A social media banner Social media posts, stories, or ads A printed brochure or sign. Graphics can help attract attention to a post or ad, break up blocks of text in a blog post or web page, and add important visual context to written content to improve the overall experience for your audience and increase engagement and conversions.

4. Use design best practices to create eye-catching, engaging graphics that quickly convey a message to your audience.

Keep your graphic simple to avoid overcrowding it with too many elements that make it difficult for viewers to understand what part of the graphic they should focus on. Use bold, contrasting colors that align with your brand’s color palette to create an attention-grabbing graphic. If you are adding overlay text to your image, make sure it’s large enough to be easily read on mobile devices. Pay attention to text-to-image ratio restrictions on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which may significantly restrict the reach of your ads if the image you use contains more than 20% text.

5. Format each of your graphics to the correct resolution, dimensions, and file size for the platform it will be displayed on.

For example: Print: At least 300 dpi resolution. Instagram: 1080 × 1080 px WordPress featured image: About 1200 × 628 px. Note any file size limitations for email marketing software or social media platforms.  After adding new images to your website, run a speed test on the modified pages. If a new visual element is negatively affecting the loading speed of your website, consider compressing it into a smaller file size to improve the loading time.

6. Add your brand's logo or name to highly shareable graphics that you create to help increase your brand awareness.

For example, if your team designs an infographic that details valuable industry-specific information that other businesses and professionals will want to share, you should add your brand’s logo in the bottom corner of the image. This will ensure that your brand receives proper credit when the infographic is shared across social media and other blogs, boosting awareness for your brand as a wider audience sees the graphic.