The Easiest Guide to Making Clean, Eye-Catching Event Graphics (No Design Experience Needed!)

1. What program should you use to make your graphics? (for ALL levels)
2. Basic Design Principles 101 (consistency, hierarchy, alignment, white space, color contrast) with DO’s + DON’Ts Examples
3. What colors should you use? (and how to pick them)
4. What event information should you include? (And what information isn’t necessary)
5. The Holy Grail Design Resources for Non-Designers Infographic
6. StartupTree’s Very Own Custom Event Graphics Templates with 10 Types of Events (editable in Google Slides)

What program should you use?

• For anyone: Google Slides is a versatile classic for whipping up a quick graphic and Canva is a great, easy-to-use design tool that anyone can get the hang of. It’s free to sign up and they have tons of nicely-designed templates for all your design needs. The downside is that it does tend to look a bit template-ized and unoriginal since so many orgs do use it.
• For people wanting to up their game: Figma! This is my personal secret sauce for great design work. Figma Pro is FREE for students and educators and is a fantastic collaborative design tool. It is functional as both a web tool and an application tool, so you don’t need to download anything if you don’t want to (although I will say the web app is quite nice). There is a bit of a learning curve, like with any new application, but it’s very intuitive to use once you get the hang of it.
• For pro designers: use whatever you want! Who am I to tell you? I’m a big fan of Figma (if you couldn’t already tell) and Adobe InDesign though.

Design Principles 101

Consistency

• This is by far one of the most important keys to any successfully designed graphic. This is a hack in itself because it also makes your life a LOT easier! Spend some time “inventing” your wheel once and then easily swap out titles, images, and logos from then on.
• Once you design something well once, you can template-ize it and use it for other needs. Consistency makes your collateral easier to take in, more pleasing to the eye, and saves you time and effort.

🧠 Don’t make your audience think more than they have to! From a pure user experience standpoint, the less mental work you make your users do, the better. Don’t make them re-search for where the important information on a graphic is every time.

• A good rule of thumb is to always keep some consistency in at least one of these buckets: color, location of word placement, size of the graphic, or general style.
• For StartupTree event graphics in particular, try and choose a consistent size template. I personally think a 16:9 ratio (1920 x 1080 pixels), the classic PowerPoint slide size, is a solid choice. Don’t pick a square graphic for one, a tall graphic for another, and a wide graphic for another.
• When people are scrolling through your events page, it’s also simply nice to have it all stacked like one cohesive unit.

• Hierarchy comes in many forms — most notably: sizing, style, font choice, and color.
• The point is to use visual indicators to differentiate types of information and the priority of that information to your reader. BIG, bold text put front and center is often the headline, while text formatted a bit differently can be supplementary — see?

• The most simple way you can guide your reader’s eye to what’s most important is by using size. After that, use style, color, or font choice to differentiate.

🎢 Size: BIGGER text size vs. smaller text size

👕 Style: regular vs. bold vs. italics

👆 Font Choice: one font for all headlines vs. different font for specific information

🎨 Color: color background with white text vs. inverted (swapping the text and background colors in one area)

Alignment

• The easiest way to make something look clean and professional is to choose an alignment and STICK to it (see consistency).
• Right-aligned or center-aligned is always a clear, safe bet.
• There are always exceptions, but try not to use more than one alignment in a single graphic (other than when displaying a big group of logos).

White Space + Information Overload

• This doesn’t necessarily mean space in the color white! It means making sure to leave sufficient space around each element for it to breathe.
• LESS IS MORE! Always steer on the side of less clutter when possible (i.e. max 5–6 different types of information). Any information that’s missing can go in the description.

• High contrast combinations are more eye-catching, more accessible to read, and looks better! Simple as that.
• White text on a color background is a solid go-to. Dark text on white or light colors can also look good, but make sure to use a photo or border as well, or it will blend into the event page without a solid shape and doesn’t look much like a thumbnail.

What colors should you use?

What information should you include?

• Title of the Event in Bold
• Subtitle Descriptor, if applicable, above or below in smaller text and in a different style (all caps + bolded OR regular type and unbolded are both good options). This is usually something like “Annual Pitch Competition”, “Speaker Series”, or “Workshop Series”.

• Keeping one consistent format for all your events help users get familiarized. Two good examples:

Wednesday June 2nd, 2021  6:00–7:30PM  25 Smith Hall

Wednesday June 2nd, 2021 | 6:00–8:00 PM ET

• Day of the week is important because off the top of your head, nobody knows when November 3rd is, but when you add the day of the week it is, people immediately comb their schedule to realize if they are available then.

• Pick a background color: the very first thing people typically notice about a well-made graphic is color — use that and make it count. White or transparent backgrounds are generally less enticing and eye-catching, and they can blend in with the page background.
• Pro tip: elevate your plain color background by making it into a gradient! You can do this in most applications including Google Slides and Figma. Pick two colors that are similar to create more depth in your background.
• If the event is a speaker event, add a photo of the speaker.
• If you have a program logo, throw that in centered at the top or in one corner with sufficient space around it. If you are using a colored background, see if you can find an inverted, transparent logo (all white without a closed background color).

• Noun Project is a great, free resource for icons! You can use these to add a little “oomph” for workshop or industry-focused events. It’s free to make an account and then you can download as many icons as you need in both PNG and SVG format. (Tip: Download PNGs when designing in Google Slides or Canva, and download SVGs when designing in Figma or another vector-based design tool.)
• Unsplash is great for stock photography that doesn’t look like stock photography! If you have nice photos of previous events you’ve held, by all means, use those instead — the more unique and eye-catching, the better.

What information is typically NOT necessary: 🚫

• A full description of the event that spans more than a one-liner — if it is in sentence format, include it in the description instead.
• Website links or long URLs
• Too much contact information
• Upcoming or unrelated event dates/times/information

The Holy Grail of Design Resources for Non-Designers

StartupTree’s Very Own Event Graphics Templates (editable in Google Slides)

• Feel free to swap out the StartupTree logo with your own university or program logo! All the text and photo placements are recommended, but adjust as you feel necessary or use this template as a jumping off point for your own creativity.
• When you’re done tweaking and inputting your own text, go to File > Download > JPEG image (.jpg, current slide) and you’ll have a beautiful graphic ready for upload!

• Simple Event Graphic
• Simple Event Graphic with Sub-description
• Workshop/Information Session
• Speaker/Talk Event
• Panel Event
• Workshop Event
• Partnered Workshop Event
• Office Hours
• Competition
• Career Fair

💡 Events posted on StartupTree with a custom-made graphic rake in a 271% increase in page views compared to events posted without one.