Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media

Let’s be hon­est, mak­ing your brand stand out from the crowd is a chal­lenge. We care­ful­ly plan our con­tent to impact and attract our audi­ence. While our copy may be very valu­able, we will always be attract­ed to visu­als first. If we are able to peak inter­est, then, peo­ple will want to know more.

Design mistakes to avoid on social Media

Design mis­takes can cause our audi­ence to lose inter­est very quick. Why? Because our visu­als can often con­fuse them. And that’s not help­ful when you have ded­i­cat­ed so much time to gen­er­ate com­pelling con­tent! There is hope though. We want to empow­er you with ways you can eas­i­ly pre­vent this! You CAN improve your visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion by avoid­ing these design mis­takes on social media.

1. Oh, So Many Fonts 

This is one of the most com­mon and mis­takes! If your copy men­tions the impor­tance of orga­ni­za­tion, strat­e­gy, clar­i­ty, struc­ture… and so on, you must back it up with visu­als. Stick to 3 or less fonts. Too many fonts cre­ate visu­al clut­ter. Ran­dom font selec­tion results in ran­dom results. Just like this eagle cow below. When fonts don’t com­pli­ment each oth­er, they will fight for atten­tion. And in the end, they over­shad­ow the impor­tance of your content.

Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media, social media content, social media design, adobe spark post, visual content

2. No Visual Hierarchy 

When cre­at­ing your social media graph­ics, con­sid­er includ­ing only the most impor­tant copy. You want to guide your view­ers with the copy you want them to read first, sec­ond and so on. To achieve this, make it a great read­ing expe­ri­ence by using dif­fer­ent text sizes. But don’t over do it. You can learn more about that on our typog­ra­phy tips for mar­ket­ing post.

3. Color Contrast Issues 

The read­ing expe­ri­ence we cre­ate can have a big impact. If peo­ple have a hard time read­ing our con­tent, they will move on. When plac­ing our text over sol­id col­or back­grounds, make sure that it is easy to read. If you see some sort of visu­al vibra­tion around the let­ters, that means your back­ground is around the same inten­si­ty as the type. This makes your text very hard to read.

Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media, social media content, social media design, adobe spark post, visual content

If you encounter this sit­u­a­tion, try chang­ing the one of the col­ors to a dark­er or lighter ver­sion. A sim­ple col­or change will make all the dif­fer­ence. When you feel it’s easy to read, so will your audience.

Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media, social media content, social media design, adobe spark post, visual content

4. Confusing Visuals 

Pho­tog­ra­phy and illus­tra­tions are visu­al assets you can use to dri­ve your mes­sage. If a brand is all about empow­er­ing and lift­ing oth­ers, using dark, moody photographs/illustrations will not align with the mes­sage. As a mat­ter of fact, it can com­plete­ly change the tone of your copy.

Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media, social media content, social media design, adobe spark post, visual content


When cre­at­ing your visu­al con­tent, con­sid­er the impact con­fus­ing visu­als can have. Let’s say we want­ed to be bold and edgy. And we change the above image to a dark­er one, think­ing it could help encour­age oth­ers to have bold courage.

Design Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media, social media content, social media design, adobe spark post, visual content

A sim­ple change where the image is dark­er, com­plete­ly changes the tone.

Do you still feel encour­aged after the changes below? The mut­ed image feels washed out and cer­tain­ly makes it scary to take a change into some­thing out of our com­fort zone. This is a sim­ple change you can con­sid­er as you design your con­tent for social media.

5. Too Much Copy

We all want to share our brand sto­ry. How­ev­er, too much text in a small graph­ic is one of the most com­mon design mis­takes in social media. It can be easy to get excit­ed about what we want to share. But remem­ber we want to cap­ti­vate our audi­ence, not over­whelm them. As you cre­ate your graph­ics, give your audi­ence a sen­tence, or two, that peaks enough inter­est for them to want to learn more. If you need to share more, use that on the cap­tion of your post.

Now that you know what design mis­takes to avoid on social media, your con­tent is set to stand out and have high­er chances of engage­ment. All the hard work you put towards your con­tent cre­ation will pay off as you apply these strate­gies when design­ing your social media content.

If you know any­one that would ben­e­fit from this blog post, we’d love it if you share it with them! 

About the Author

Nicte Cuevas, Principal of Nicte Creative Design, empowers mission-driven businesses through strategic design & branding. Nicte has applied this when working with Adobe Spark and Twitter Business, LinkedIn Learning, Dogs on Deployment and Purina, Girl Scouts, The Houston Zoo and The Contemporary Arts Museum. Her excellence in communication design & marketing has been recognized by multiple national / international awards, including a coveted feature in Graphic Design USA's People to Watch.

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