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It's the little things that count.

You don't have to be a designer to make a nicely designed piece of work. There are little things you can do to make big differences. Here are just a few: 

1. Do not use more than two typefaces (fonts) in a document.
By minimizing the amount of different typefaces you use, you allow your readers to focus on the content rather than be distracted by all of the different styles going on. 

2. Use photography, NOT clipart.
Photography is much more emotionally powerful than clipart. Also, clipart is made by many different people in many different styles—when you use it in a document, it never looks stylistically cohesive or congruent. 

3. Create hierarchy in your content.
Make all of your headers the same, all of your sub-heads the same, and all of your body content the same. For example:

THIS IS MY HEADER
This Is My Sub-Head
Here's all my body content that will be in paragraphs.

By creating this hierarchy, you direct the reader's eye and help them sift through the content. When all of your lines look the same, your reader is overwhelmed and doesn't know where to look first. Using hierarchy is like subliminally giving directions on how to read your content.

4. Less is more.
I had a college professor who told us to write a 1,200 word paper and bring it to class the next day. The next day she told us we had to cut the whole paper down to 600 words. Surprisingly, my paper was much better after I cut it in half! The point was to only keep what was absolutely necessary and to only write exactly what I wanted to say. This is very important in communication—if you can say it in 5 words instead of 10, then do! People are busy and more likely to read less. 

5. Use bullets, not paragraphs.
Just like tip #4, less is more. If you can say it in a two-line bullet rather than a six-sentence paragraph, your reader is more likely to read and absorb it.

6. NO PAPYRUS OR COMIC SANS.
These two fonts are extremely overused everywhere, but in churches especially. If you want more font variety, try going to websites like MyFonts.com or FontSquirrel.com to find different/new typefaces.

7. Use links for online communications.
For example, in tip #6 I linked the words "MyFonts.com" and "FontSquirrel.com" directly to their websites, so if you wanted, you could go there by clicking on them. Lean into the strengths of the medium you are working in.

8. Put only one space between sentences.
Two spaces after the period leaves your paragraphs looking like they have holes in them. The habit of putting two spaces after a sentence came about during the use of typewriters: Typewriters used monospaced type, meaning all the letters were given the same amount of space, which made some words harder to read than others. Putting two spaces after a sentence made text easier to read. Thankfully, the day of typewriters is over, and we now have computers without monospaced lettering. That means that two spaces after a sentence is no longer necessary!