Tips for Harmony Social Miner Graphic Designers
Why consider graphic designing?
Images can present information which are easier to follow and understand. As the saying goes, “a picture paints a thousand words”.
Images, grabs more attention compared to plain text. Even Images are helpful to content writers because graphic aids article post to be easily recognisable. For example, in Twitter and Medium, articles with cover photos can gain more impressions. And of course, right words + right graphic = awesome!
Also, Images are handy and they can be easily saved and shared on social media.
There are many to chose from:
Infographics:
Cover photos / Posters:
Memes, GIF, etc..
So here are some tips when creating one:
1. Think Value!
What contributes a valuable content as a whole?
We already know that quality is what we are looking for, not quantity. But most will agree that there are a lot of quality content but are not so valuable.
This is because the “value” provided is already existing. For example, no need to create a same graphic about Harmony ONE new exchange listing over again, if that was already posted, unless you are providing other value like social media influence.
We need to produce something “new”
In graphic designing we can do this by summing up relevant info into one graphic. For example, sum up the past week news from into one graphic. This creates value because in a glance you can view and share Harmony’s progress in a single post.
Create something educational, you can do this by thinking of something that the community is not commonly aware about Harmony, some technical stuffs, interesting history, etc..
2. Follow Harmony Branding color, logo and fonts
You can download the Brading Style Guide here:
Download Nunito font here:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Nunito
Download Fira Sans font here:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Fira+Sans
Sometimes, branding can be “ignored”, if what you are creating is a meme :)
3. Make info readable
This is just basic but sometimes ignored: Use the right background color, font color, size, ratio, spacing and alignment.
4. Follow Standard Dimensions:
For infographics, there is no standard ratio, as they can stand as their own. Just keep them readable and consider the screen resolution of the device if ever you want them to fit.
On Twitter, when posting high resolution infographics, use PNG format with transparency to keep the quality of your image. You can read more of the details here:
https://lifehacker.com/stop-twitter-from-turning-your-pngs-into-jpgs-1822461989
Guide for Social Media Image Dimensions:
https://postcron.com/en/blog/social-media-image-dimensions-sizes/
For Medium:
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004849128-Publication-headers
5. Make them usable
You can do this by allowing others to reuse your work. As for my works, I always say on my posts that anyone can freely download and use them. If you want credit for work, include your signature on the graphic, by this, you are implying that anyone can share your work even without your permission.
For videos and animation, if having sole right of views of your videos is not your concern, allow others to download and use them. A video platform like Vimeo has an option that allows viewers to directly download the uploaded video.
If you are creating merch designs and 3D models, provide the source file so others with 3D printers can also reproduce them.
Applications to use
For me, the best one is Inkscape, it is a free and opensource vector graphic editor. Unlike raster editor like Adobe Photoshop, with Inkscape I can produce graphics that can scale while keeping the resolution clear. For me it is the best app for creating custom graphics.
Inkscape is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux:
You can download it here: https://inkscape.org/
Another popular one is Canva, Canva is for designing presentations, social media graphics. Canva is easy to use even for non-designers.
Web app: https://www.canva.com/
Playstore App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.canva.editor&hl=en
Again, let us think value and create something new for Harmony! ✋
Want to be one of us?
Join us here: https://community.harmony.one/
