Graphic Design Intro 3: Repurposing Graphics

Once you are familiar with the fundamental concepts of graphic design, you have a branding style guide that you can follow, and you have fully understood the design goal of your project, you are ready to design and create your own graphic.

Before you start, ask yourself: Can the graphics you need use existing images and logos? Most of the time, the answer to this question will be “yes”, especially if you are just starting out.

Let’s see what you can do to save time in finding the right image to use. There are many places you can go to search and find your ideal image.

Internally, for example, as you’ve seen, the brand’s style guide is a great place to get images and logos.

There are also good web sources for images, fonts, etc., both of which are free and for a small fee. Finally, you can use templates and graphics provided by free online graphic design tools like Pixlr or Canva.

Another great option is to repurpose an existing graphic – like using a stock photo as the background for a social media image, for example.

By ‘repurposing’ an image, we mean adapting it or breaking it up to use for another purpose.

For example, you can take an info graphic and turn it into a number of individual graphics

Benefits of Repurposing Content

Repurposing is quicker than creating from scratch.

It is also more profitable and cost effective than buying a graphics. And of course, if an image appears in more than one place, it reinforces the message. In short, if you have good evergreen content, always look for opportunities to maximize reuse and save time.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are some excellent pre-built templates out there for most of the jobs you need to do.

PR tip: Use Canva to find free graphic design templates. Canva offers a large library of templates and comprehensive examples to produce social media images and blog graphics that you can use.

Tips to using graphic design templates

Here’s a list of tips to consider in order to stand out when using graphic design templates:

• Ensure that the quality of the images is HD and free from any copyright.
• Ensure you remove any placeholder text or content.
• Be inspired by these sources, but don’t just copy them directly.
• Be careful of the contrast and fonts of some of the templates.

Want to learn how to create an image from scratch, step-by-step? We Love to hear from you, reach us at Urban Arts.