It wasn’t too long ago where you would stay up for the 10pm news and watch the sports segment to find the final scores scroll across the bottom of the screen. But gone are the days where you’d check the morning paper for the score of last night’s game.

Now you go to social media and find your favorite team’s profile and see what the school posted. 

Since we live in a digital age where information is consumed visually, graphics have become a key way to communicate and market a school. Graphics are no longer optional for a school’s content because this content:

• Showcases students—not just those competing and performing, but those creating

• Builds a school’s online brand

• Breaks down the walls of a school

• Signals the school as a leader in innovation, creativity, and marketing

• Connects with a school’s community and network

No matter whether a student, teacher, or administrator is creating the graphic, these five things to look for to level up a school’s social media graphics will transcend software nuances and go directly to elevating designs.

1. Image(s)

A photo can make or break a graphic. When adding an image to a graphic, high-quality is a must. If you have a great photo, but it isn’t necessarily the best quality—is it clear enough where it isn’t distracting? If not, don’t add the photo or don’t make the photo the focal point of the graphic. Don’t add photos of a player’s back as a focal point; your viewers want to see the face and number of the player featured. 

Every photo you put on your graphic should be edited. Whether it’s done in Lightroom or you’re adjusting the brightness and coloring in Canva. Edited photos will enhance your graphic tenfold. Ensure cropping and background removal of an image is done tediously well—choppy crops can attract unwanted attention. 

Don’t be afraid to go above and beyond to add special effects to photos and see what magic can happen to your graphic through images.

2. Background

Your background should go far beyond just a solid color—a background needs depth. There should be texture, graphical elements, images, and more. AND they should all coalesce well. There’s a fine line between adding too little and too much to the background of a graphic. 

Ensure your graphic has depth, but don’t let it take away from overall design. Let your background add to your design, not distract from it. And ALWAYS ask yourself, “What can I add to give this graphic more dimension?”

3. Typography

There are millions of fonts. Millions. And designs can be transformed not by the content of the text itself, but by the font! Typography, like music in a video, can provoke emotion in your design and make your audience feel excited, calm, relaxed, focused, and more. 

You need to seize the power of typography to elevate your graphic. First, you have to make sure the font is easy to read and spaces properly—both line spacing and letter spacing. Go beyond the same font style in every text box. Try different thickness (thin to extra bold), effects (shadows to hollow), and more.

Use more than one font for your graphics and pair them well. Ensure that the font fits your school branding and use font variants to express different information and evoke certain emotions.

4. Graphic Elements

Graphic elements range from lines to shapes to stock images to frames to tears to templates and more. Graphic elements enhance the design of a graphic and fill blank space efficiently and creatively. However, just like the background, it can be hard to tread the thin line of too few and too many graphic elements.

Graphic elements should go beyond standard design templates and even give extra context or design flair to a graphic. When using multiple graphic elements, you must make sure that they stitch together well and naturally weaved in with the main creation.

5. Information

Since information is consumed visually, a tough challenge with social media graphics is expressing necessary information about game times, location, etc. in a way that is still beautifully designed. 

How do you intermix social media copy with graphic information? Is the information clear, concise, subtle, and condensed? Do you have school logos, mascots, times, event logos, hashtags, profile handles, player names, etc.? And is all of that organized and designed well?

No matter how beautifully designed a social media graphic is, if it doesn’t convey purposeful, concise information, it can be ineffective. Information is critical for graphics, but the difficulty comes when deciding how much information is too little or too much.

Get Your Personalized Graphic Analysis

Get PERSONALIZED feedback on graphics that you, your students, or your school create that will help take your social media graphics to the next level. Download your graphic as a .png or .jpg, share your .psd files, or add me to your web-based creations! 

Email your graphic to me at danielle@striv.education and I’ll send back a video analysis—let’s create better together!

Watch the Full Webinar

—————

Get access to more graphic design and content creation resources in our Digital Media Education program!