Good Design: Tips & Resources

Making your campaign look good can be tricky, especially if you are a small charity and are pushed for time. We have tried to make it as easy as possible for you to make a beautiful-looking website with 30 (and counting) templates & themes and an easy-to-use Page Editor to help you build anything.
 
Here are a few things to consider to help you turn your good campaign into a great one:
  

Stick to the Rules (Mostly) 🔗

Have you heard of brand guidelines? You might already have some! Brand guidelines are a great way to set your organisation up for success-- when you don't quite know what to do, they give you a set of rules to follow and are a sure-fire way of getting your website looking 👌

Don't have any guidelines and feel like you need some? Check out this article on How to Create a Brand Style Guide!

🔥 Hot Tip: If you are lucky enough to have some brand guidelines already, make sure you stick to them as much as possible! All design customisations can be accessed under the Design section in your navigation bar.
  

Choose a Good Colour Palette 🔗

Colour is a big part of any design: whether you're settling on your brand colours or deciding on the background colour for your header, choosing the right colours is crucial to conveying your message to your supporters.

They are nearly an infinite amount of colours, so it can be very hard to settle on a collection that works well together and are accessible for all users. Have no fear though, here are some resources to help you out:

• Colour Hunt - a great site for getting some colour palette inspiration
• Muzli Colors - a great site that allows you to generate an entire colour palette with ease
• Pigment - scroll through an endless supply of two colour combinations, perfect for your Primary and Secondary colours
• Hello Colour - a simple site that generates a set of two complementary and 100% accessible colours, perfect for your primary & secondary brand colours

👀 Accessibility: When choosing your colours, please check that your colour combinations are accessible. At Raisely, accessibility is of utmost importance and we try our best to make our products accessible to everyone 💛

Space it Out 🔗

When it comes to designing the layout of your campaign's website, it can be very tempting to cram everything in an attempt to ensure people get all the information. 

However, nothing bad will happen if you let your content 🗣 breeeeaaatthhhheee a little. In fact, good things will happen! 🤯 Allowing for space helps make your website easier to read, more legible, and most importantly, it can help guide people through the content and interactions of your site.

Hint: Change the spacing around your elements by using the sliders found under Advanced > Positioning in the element's settings menu! You can adjust the spacing above and below your Blocks, as well as the spacing of your columns for Rows.
  

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words 🔗

When it comes to effective communication, most people think of the written word. However, images can help communicate your message in just a glance.

Steer clear from obvious stock photography-- there are countless websites out there like Unsplash or Pexels where you can download thousands of stunning images that will be just right for your campaign.

Icons are also a great way of breaking up your content and making it more visually interesting, and again, they can help people navigate through your site and find the content they're after.

Using our Page Editor, you can easily add background images to your Rows or use an Image, Image Tile, or Icon Block to make your website look 👌 💯
 
 
🔥 Hot Resource: Need some killer icons? Search and download 100s of beautiful, free-to-use icons from Iconmonstr.com
  

Be Purposeful 🔗

Although we are talking about design principles, another very important aspect to consider when building your website is the way you structure your content. Wording is hugely important in communication, and it can be extremely effective when you have a coherent and defined tone of voice.

That being said, words alone won't be enough-- a good website also needs to be structured well to let the words stand out and do their job. Plan out your content in advance, and then try to separate your content into visually different, clearly-delineated blocks to help differentiate the sections.
 

Cannot find the support guide you are after? Head on over to our YouTube channel 📺 for more creative content to help you go further. You can even leave us comments, suggesting new content ideas 🤯