
Are you looking to add some life to your headlines? Or how to make your graphics look more interesting, more catchy?
It’s essential that you do everything that you can to make your message stand out! But you have no clue how to do this.
Improving the design of your headlines will:
- Stop the scroll of your viewers
- Make you look professional
- Get seen by your ideal customer
- Convince users to click over to your website
- Become recognizable online
I’m sharing a VERY SIMPLE technique I use in almost all the graphics I create for my blog, business and social media.
Choose 1 or 2 words, the most important ones of your headline (probably keywords) and make them POP out.
5 Simple Design Tricks to make Words POP!
It’s all about thinking in terms of VISUAL HIERARCHY. And creating it, by working with the resources in your design toolbox. Using hierarchy is a graphic design technique to organize and prioritize your content.
The good news is it’s much easier than it sounds.
Let’s review 5 different ideas we can apply, to enhance words from a headline:
- Change COLORS
- Play with different FONT SIZE
- Use FONT PAIRING
- Change the BACKGROUND
- Add an attractive ELEMENT
Now let’s dive into each of these tricks and see some examples.
1. Change the COLOR
People are visually drawn to color, especially when it’s used to highlight important information. A bright splash of color, is hard to miss.

A simple way to play with color is to combine a vivid, warm color (like orange or red), with a bright, cool color (like blue or purple) for a very striking color palette. This is a very powerful type of contrast.
In this example, the most important words are “design” and “pinterest pins”, so I changed the color of those words to make them POP out from the background.
2. Change the SIZE
Straight to the point: the biggest design element gets the more attention. Enlarging a word’s size (its dimensions) and scale (its size in relationship to other objects) is one of the easiest and most effective ways to give it visual importance.

VERY IMPORTANT: If everything is too big, then nothing stands out. Don’t overwhelm your viewer with enormous wording. And make sure your smaller wording is always readable.
In this example, you can notice that the important words are “graphic design”, they look stand out because they are much bigger that the rest of the headline.
3. Change the FONT
Combining fonts is one of the easiest ways to differentiate word inside a headline. You can easily add an accent using this simple technique.
But how do I know which font to use? Think of fonts as personality types.
- Serif fonts (the ones that have a little “tail”on the end) are seen as traditional, serious, mature, formal, corporate.
- Script Handwritten are casual, informal, dynamic; with humanistic qualities that give them a warm personality.
- Sans Serif fonts (fonts without little “tails”) are usually neutral and universal. They have a more modern feel, and convey a minimalistic mood with their clean lines.

In this example you can see how changing the font of a particular word, makes it pop right away.
Using a sans serif, clean modern font for the headline; combined with a script handwritten font for the 2 words you want to emphasize, gives your design a much professional look.
4. Change the BACKGROUND
When playing around with a different background for a particular word, contrast is key. Text has to be readable to be successful.

Make sure that text varies in color enough to be seen when placed on top of the background photo or color. If the photo or color of the background is dark, opt for white (or light colored) text. If the photo is light, go with a dark-colored text overlays.
See how the words “design” and “pinterest pins” have a box of color behind? That simple trick draws your attention right at them. Easy peasy!
5. Add a FRAME
You can add shape, lines and arrows, to draw attention to a specific part of a graphic. But, keep it simple. When adding elements to your design, be clear on the purpose behind it. Don’t just add swirls, shapes or others to take up space.

Using a certain style of elements with consistency throughout your graphics, helps you look unique online. Your images need to be cohesive so that your viewers recognize it’s you or your brand.
In this example, notice how the use of elements like brushstrokes and arrows, drive attention to a specific set of words. I’ve also rotated “PIN DESIGN” to follow the angle of the pink stroke.
I hope you find this tricks helpful. These graphic design techniques are great tools to add emphasis to certain words in a headline.
Remember that to grab your viewer’s attention and stop them mid-scroll, you need to help them know where to look first, second, and third. Start drawing attention to the keywords your audience may be searching for.
If you want to more simple graphic design tricks, check out my post on Simplified Graphic Design for Bloggers.
Want to design better graphics to grow your blog? Take a look at this blogpost: Polish Your Visuals with Handy Tips for Non-Designers and make sure to download the FREE Checklist.
Happy designing!