(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Unknown.jpg alt: )
**Attention to detail can often be the difference between producing something good, and producing something great, and it is key when creating anything from a brand or an advertising campaign, down to a letterhead or a business card. **
Your brand does not just consist of a logo. It is a series of details, some small and some large, that come together to build your brand image. Attention to the finest of these details can lead to a strong brand that will stand the test of time and show that you have pride and take care in your brand image.
A brilliant idea for an advert can very easily be lost without attention to detail in the execution, in the same way that a fantastic logo can lose all of its impact if it’s poorly positioned or overcrowded on a page.
Essentially, it’s about constructing something that’s visually appealing to the eye, and something that the user doesn’t have to work hard at to understand. Poor attention to detail can result in a disinterested or confused reader, meaning your message isn’t hitting home. Here are some key elements to look out for:
**The design**
A hierarchy should be considered within the design, so that header items, body items and footer items are grouped together rather than spread throughout the piece. This enables the readers’ eye to travel through the content smoothly, and in order. To further aid aesthetic appeal and readability, all elements on a page should align to each other to avoid the illusion that they are floating around.
Justification is also important; left aligned text is considered the easiest to read due to the consistent starting point of each line. Forced justification, as seen in newspapers can be used to quickly align text however this can lead to awkward spacing on lines with fewer words.
Another often-overlooked detail are widows. Widows are single words left alone on a line at the end of a paragraph which create a larger than expected line break and disrupt the path of the eye, making reading less enjoyable. Inconsistent line lengths can also make reading harder, so where possible line lengths should follow a vertical line as closely as possible to avoid creating shapes that can be distracting.
**Content and copy**
An area that may not be considered part of the design; but is just as important, is the content. Proof reading is often seen as just a quick glance over a document, but time should be allocated to it because it is far more than this. S
pelling is generally what people will look for however other areas that are often missed include inconsistent punctuation at the end of bullet points, and the cases of words – that appear capitalised on one line and then lowercase on the next. We read copy forwards to make sure it makes sense, and then backwards to check the spelling of each individual word, and formatting.
**The business card test**
A business card will more than likely be the smallest thing ever produced for you and therefore there is only room for essential information – additional elements simply clutter. Because space is at a minimum on a business card, every single thing positioned on it needs to be carefully considered. If a project gets bigger you should still apply the same rule though, and if anything you need to be stricter when working on larger scale projects, as it’s so much easier to get careless.
When working on your brand as a whole, consistency and accuracy are key.