bismuth and daisies | graphics

[ IMG THREAD 101 ]

helloooo and welcome to a guide on how to make nicer image threads. image threads are essentially graphics which provide certain info on requesting, designs etc. they are commonly used in the multimedia designs club and are very commonly done wrong. here are some of my tips on how to avoid most of these rookie mistakes.

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[ structure ]

one of the most important factors in a graphic with multiple bodies of text is structure. you don't want to overwhelm the reader with a cluttered structure nor do you want them to get bored with plain bodies of text. a nice way to do this is to break up the text into sections, strategically. this means the days of copying and pasting body text as is, is over. try to incorporate patterns, corresponding thread elements, different pictures etc into the body text so it doesn't get boring.

Here is one such example. Take a look at thread A. My god... that is just an overload of text, and it isn't even the requesters fault! Thread A was made approximately more than 1 year ago.

The problem with this thread is that it introduces too much information too quickly. there isn't any room to relax with this. It's like the thread wants you to keep reading and ultimately get too worn out to request. And plus, who even reads rules anymore??

Look at Thread B though, made presumably 4 months ago, this thread keeps a balance between text and pictures. The thread also has important info in color but we'll get to that later. The dashed lines create separate bodies of text but isn't boring like Thread A. 

so tl;dr - don't make your thread boring. add some life into it. no straight up copy pasting from the requesters pastebin. maintain balance

[ information ]

with body texts, it's very important to highlight the important information so the requester isn't bored and skims through your text. first of all, i would highly suggest keeping your rules to a minimum. no one cares what you like and dislike, be straight up and concise. there's no need for two rules stating not to thread hop.

to highlight important information, i recommend using a different color for that specific word or phrase. you can also underline it, bold, italicise etc. below are some ways you can highlight info.

there are so many other ways to highlight information but these are just a few i can think of.

[ text ]

this is one of the most important factors in thread design if not the most. MY GOD. i I cannot stress on this enough. SMALL TEXT 4THEAESTHETIC ≠ GOOD THREAD. The point of a thread design is to convey information on your services. Sure the aesthetic is important but dude if you're going to have 6px font size, then please reconsider. Let me show you what i mean. 

i don't think i need to say anything more. look how terribly illegible that first paragraph is. yes you can read it but i genuinely need to squint and move myself closer to the screen. some of the letters have also become distorted. Now the last two paragraphs are better attempts. It is legible and nicely spaced out so it doesn't look to cluttered. I always recommend 8px+ font size, nothing more than 200px letter spacing and keep a line height 2-6px more than your font size (but that depends on the graphic). 

lowercase is very effective and its one of my favourite type to use. it appears a little more legible and a whole lot cleaner. uppercase is good too but i seem to have trouble making it work a lot of the time.

[ colors ]

make sure you pick a suitable color scheme for both your mood and the subject of your thread. one more thing to keep in mind is the text colors. do not pick colors for text that are too close to the background color. you want to make your info stand out, not blend in.

look at these two examples. you can barely read what the first one says. it's hardly legible. I understand wanting to stick to a color scheme but you can do that in ways that the text becomes legible. Look at the second example. Both the bg color and the text color belongs to the same color family. I just eyedropper the color for the background and brought the color slider up by maybe an inch or two. there is contrast, it's legible and it fits your color scheme.

[ coding your thread ]

now @Distinctive manages to explain coding links into threads so so well that I'll just link her tutorial in the external link.

[ extras ]

now remember, this is a very loose guide on what i like to do when designing threads. you can do whatever you like! use whatever color schemes, text spacing, font-sizes etc. there aren't any hard and fast rules. i just personally use these tips as a guide. i am by no means an expert soon don't take it from me.

i hope this helps you guys out! what are some of your pet peeves with threads? let me know in the comments <3

Also, would you guys like to see maybe a Covers 101 type thing? Let me know if you're interested in seeing guides for other graphics too!