Design is important! You want the information, photos, and graphic elements to be easy for the reader to navigate. If you put too many elements on a page, it can:

• Make a page feel crowded
• Weaken your overall theme
• Confuse the reader
• Make text illegible
• Make it difficult to select elements on a page due to overlap

Common choices that make a page feel too crowded:

• Too many photos on one spread - TIP: The less photos per page, the more visual impact you will have

• Minimal or inconsistent spacing - TIP: Leave some margin and gutter space between text, photos and edges to prevent it from feeling cramped

• Overuse of clipart or decorative graphics - TIP: This may compete with your photos instead of supporting them, only use a few per page

• Multiple fonts and font styles - TIP: Choose 2-3 and use those solely throughout

• Busy or high contrast backgrounds  - TIP: Choose backgrounds that don't compete with your images. The backgrounds may be too heavily textured or patterned. 

• Too many colors on one page - TIP: Choose 2-4 colors and use them throughout the pages to lessen visual noise

• Filling all empty space - TIP: Breathing room is good!
   

This layout below is very bright. The dark text is over top of a busy background and its difficult to read. All of the different colors are competing against each other. Lets make some tweaks:

In the new design, we have more negative space for the eye to travel and less shapes and clipart. The photos are more of the main focal point and I can read the text much easier now that there's a less busy background.



Useful Tools to assist with layout design:

Adding Borders to photos or text boxes

Distributing space evenly between elements

Fill a shape (or text box) with a solid color