Beautiful Background Design Ideas – A Helpful Guide

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Beautiful backgrounds, including colors, patterns, and textures are the unsung heroes of graphic design – giving details, depth, and interest to your layouts. From 3D patterns to isometric designs, galactic graphics to something entirely quirky, there’s a range of background image ideas for different types of industries. Whether you’re someone in need of a background reboot or a graphic designer looking for backdrop design ideas, this blog should help. Below, you’ll find a selection of attractive images and textures that you can use as your design background. But before that, let’s see what backgrounds in designs mean and why they are important.

Significance of Using Beautiful Backgrounds in Your Designs

From apps and websites to brochures and posters, background images have an incredibly transformational power to make the most of your designs. Just as different industries and businesses need different types of employees, different types of print and digital materials need specifically different background styles. While a cartoon-themed backdrop goes perfectly with kids’ toy packaging, an expandable geometric backdrop might be the perfect choice for a design agency’s responsive web design. A thoughtfully chosen background design for your website, social media handles, and other promotional campaigns can draw visitors, boost clicks, convert sales, and help you earn more revenue. Hence, it only makes sense to choose your design backdrop carefully and not keep it as a neglected afterthought.  

Read on to discover some of the coolest and most beautiful design backgrounds that will play a crucial role in your occasional and daily design process. Whether you’re promoting your YouTube channel and social media accounts or simply planning a corporate presentation or invitation, these background design ideas will come in handy.

PowerPoint Presentation

A proper backdrop can give a professional touch to any presentation and make PowerPoint slides look more consistent. Nevertheless, avoid using loud images or patterns that risk distracting the audience from the text or verbal presentation. For example, certain geometric shapes in pastel or monochrome colors make a simple yet striking background for a range of presentations. You can change the pattern and color depending on the theme of the presentation – cosmetics, travel, finances, research, or a basic client proposal. For research- or corporate-themed presentations, consider using a 3D or futuristic-inspired background. On the other hand, client proposals may go better with subtle materials or textures like canvas, concrete, or linen, in muted colors to focus on the presentation text or content.

Social Media Post

The main objective of social media posts is to draw and retain the attention of the users, for personal or professional reasons. Although the background design should be relevant to the theme of the post and your business sector, consider using colors and patterns that are instantly noticeable. For example, neons, striking 3D elements, and vivid gradients help increase viewer clicks and engagement. Elaborate textures like marble, metallics, and agate are quite in trend for use on social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

Website

Since digital screens send out colors as light, the backgrounds you choose for your apps, websites, and social media profiles will be more vibrant and high-contrast than the same colors in print. To ensure the same effectiveness of your background design on small-screen devices as well as on desktops and laptops, see that your background design is responsive and provides a good user experience on all platforms. As a rule of thumb, choose seamless backgrounds that can adapt, widen or contract without affecting the overall aesthetic of the image. Uniform material backgrounds such as wood and concrete, or recurring patterns, are great background options for online promotions. “Edgeless” backgrounds that can increase in width are also helpful.

Invitations and Event Materials

Print invitations, menu cards, and e-invites need a proper background image to set the mood of the event and invite attendees. For private parties, weddings, anniversaries, and more consider choosing 1980s-inspired designs or Art Deco backgrounds in rich hues and metallic finish to create an exciting party mood. Basic rustic textures, for example, florals, canvas, and powders, and florals can also add a happy vibe to invites for receptions, birthdays, gender reveals, and more such occasions. While floral backdrops have been in use for ages, the new trend of floral-themed backgrounds is particularly more edgy and striking.

Posters and Flyers

Designing print materials calls for a different approach than designing e-materials and websites. Typically, colors on print publications appear duller or more subdued than on digital modes like smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Keeping this factor in mind, avoid using colors that are hard to print without the use of Pantone swatches or spot colors like neons, pastels, and metallics. Instead, choose background images with bold, graphic elements like lines and shapes. You can also go for high-resolution images as beautiful backgrounds on brochures, posters, or banners. Busier backgrounds like 3D patterns or collage designs go perfectly with large-format prints like posters. Backgrounds with maximalist elements tend to have a better impact on the audience’s mind.

Top Trending Backgrounds

Space Mystery

The celestial world has a captivating effect on the human mind, at least for most of them. The moon, the stars, the orbits, and everything beyond our earthly existence have a mystery attached to them, which makes them appealing to kids and adults alike. If you want your designs to grab the audience’s attention and make them curious about your business, add a touch of celestial wonder to your design backgrounds.

For example, scenic space backgrounds are surprisingly versatile and look fantastic when used on posters. They can also help create a more engaging online experience when used on your website homepage. These space-themed backgrounds have a spontaneous psychological effect on the audience, inspiring feelings of adventure and intellectualism (ideal for medical research, presentation, science media, or business proposals), peace, and spirituality. Combine this background with simple typography to put your message across your target audience. Add these simple backgrounds to your websites, posters, or banners for a transcendent space effect.

Futuristic Outlook

3D geometric patterns, digital-inspired neon colors, and sci-fi-inspired textures make for perfect backgrounds with a futuristic zest. This design trend has originated from a huge development in the digital and technology fields. Hence, these types of background images are ideal for software businesses, electronics companies, and digital services in general. However, futuristic abstract backgrounds are suitable for any business that wants to portray an innovative outlook or thinking to its audience. It will give an advanced look to your website and other promotional materials while encouraging more customer engagement.

Solid High-contrasts

Try using a tonal division for color combinations to create an everlasting impact on your audience’s mind. When you use diverse shades of a single color for your background, your message easily stands out and gets noticed. This design strategy works perfectly for creating digital content like social media banners, banner ads, video presentations, and infomercials. Using a solid backdrop with contrast bright or neon shades helps focus on the lighter sections of the content, particularly the text. Alternatively, you can use bright-colored text with a solid, muted background to create a striking, contemporary look.

PRO TIP: Restrict your color palette. Use only two or three colors for optimal effect or choose alternate tones to create seamless visual harmony.

Metallic Marbles

Few things look as luxurious and classy as marble, which is why so many designers use this stone texture when designing advertising materials for esteemed brands. Marble and mineral stone textures have a healing effect on the mind, which makes them perfect for promoting brands and products in the health and wellness sector. The ones with golden, silver, or copper streaks look effortlessly beautiful and suit a wide range of industries, from restaurants to jewelry brands to courier services.

Mix and match various marble patterns for an eclectic background. Look for images of marbles and other natural stones with unique patterns, colors, and metallic tones for a distinctive look.

Cobalt Blue

If there’s one color that’ll never go out of fashion, it has to be blue. Its calm and collected nature makes it suitable across an extensive range of designs and industries. While Classic Blue was declared as Pantone 2020’s Color of the Year, the more vibrant variety, cobalt, makes for soothing backgrounds with in-depth meaning and beauty. This blue shade looks even more fantastic when paired with vibrant coral and neon tangerine. You can also combine a cobalt background with white, neat text for an ethereal, nautical-inspired look. Try using a 3D design in cobalt as a beautiful background for product presentations. Or, add a celestial touch to your regular designs with a cobalt bokeh background.

Tricky Textures

Using the right textures adds interest and realism to an illustration, and can easily bring a difference to the result. Achieving the right texture is all about ensuring simple composition and limited colors. Since you don’t want to distract your audience from the text, consider keeping your background substantially simple and muted. Instead of using pre-created textures, try to make your own using vivid shapes and patterns. If you lack the energy and skills to do so, your best bet is to hire a professional graphic designer to create a unique background for your branding materials.

Paper-like textures work great for digital content like social media posts and email invitations, which would benefit from a tactile effect – giving a personalized experience to the audience. The key objective of a texture is to create a three-dimensional effect that acts as a cushion between your text and your background – helping your message rise above the noise.

PRO TIP: When using a worn-out, natural texture, consider taking this style a step further with a handwritten or brush style typography.

Geometric Gradient

This has been a popular design trend for a few years now, across the web and print industry. Nevertheless, a few design approaches like 3D renders, flowing geometric patterns, and a quirky light and shadow effect are giving the regular gradient style a brand new look. For a unique, contemporary look, choose 3D gradient shapes, airbrushed textures, and papercut styles. 

The versatility of gradients makes them a suitable choice for a wide range of designs and application fields. Nevertheless, they look especially good on websites and mobile apps, where neon HEX colors become prominent. Gradients have managed to shake off some of their original 80s-influenced party spirit, but they still make fitting companions for entertainment or hospitality-themed designs, such as drink menus, event flyers, and streaming services.

Transparent Backdrops

When it comes to graphic design, sometimes the best technique is keeping it simple. For example, keeping the background transparent can decrease the clutter in your design and make the text in the foreground more readable. However, the most common mistake that people make when using transparency in their design is over-usage. To avoid this, fine-tune your transparency to complement your text, carefully avoiding the extent to which your background image becomes blurred. Else, it will only result in a dull and unimpressive design.

PRO TIP: Create a balanced look using a montage effect. Consider layering the same image in the background, while increasing the transparency.

Pretty Patterns

As with any graphic design, it’s best to keep things simple and easily decipherable. In this background, there’s a plain pattern that uses basic colors and blocks to create a subtle movement without looking complex or confusing. At the same time, there’s also something slightly abstract about the pattern that gives it a contemporary look. You can also consider using a geometric pattern background, wherein instead of a basic, repeating pattern you use asymmetrical geometric shapes and colors that merge into each other. This pattern looks abstract yet irresistibly modern. The best thing about this design technique is that it creates the feeling of movement with the eyes, without being too distracting.

Wrapping up

Whether you’re using a solid color, adding transparency, or applying liquid swirls, choosing a suitable background is an inevitable part of any conceptual design process. If you’re designing something new or recreating an old design, explore some or all of the different background techniques to see what works best for you. Or you may also consider hiring a professional design agency like DesignBro to do the job for you. They are experts in their field and always come up with the best designs for your individual needs.