63: Why Your Content Design Affects Trust (And How to Fix It for Solopreneurs)

📱 If My Brain Has to Work Too Hard, I'm Scrolling

You know that split-second moment when you land on someone's Instagram post and you just… keep scrolling? Not because the topic isn't interesting. Not because you don't need the information. But because something about it just feels hard to take in. Your brain does this tiny calculation (does this feel clear, easy to read, trustworthy?) and decides to move on before you've even read the headline.

That's exactly what's happening to your content right now if your design is working against you instead of for you. And honestly, I know this might sound dramatic (like, okay Em, it's a Canva graphic, calm yourself), but I really don't think design is just design. People are making snap decisions the second they land on your content, and those decisions are affecting your trust, your reach, your follower growth, and yes, your sales.

By the end of this post, you'll understand exactly how your colors, fonts, and overall design choices are affecting buyer behavior, and more importantly, you'll know how to fix it without becoming a professional designer.

Want to stop overthinking your Canva designs and actually create content that converts? Join The Content Coven for our monthly Make It With Me call where I walk you through customizing templates together. Learn more here →

🎨 Why I'm Teaching Visual Strategy on an Audio Podcast (And Why It Matters)

I'll be honest with you. I find it really hard to talk about visuals on my podcast because, hi, they're visual, and this is not. This is talking. But it's one of my favorite topics and something I teach and preach and love because I find it really important when it comes to getting results. Not just aesthetic results. Business results. Revenue results. Trust-building results.

Here's what I've learned after working with thousands of students in The Visual Edit, The Content Coven, and my other programs: your visuals are saying something whether you want them to or not. They're telling people where to look. They're telling people what matters in this post. They're telling people whether this feels easy to take in or whether their brain has to do too much work to figure it out.

And I don't know about you, but if my brain needs to do too much work, I'm out. I'm scrolling. I got other things to do. If a design is confusing, people usually don't sit there and analyze why this isn't working for me. They just keep scrolling, and that's the part I want you to understand.

🌟 The "Star of the Show" Framework: What Should People Notice First?

When you look at your design, ask yourself this question (and this is something I ask my students to do all the time when they submit work to me): What is the star of the show here?

Where does your eye go first? Because the star of the show for me is what I'm supposed to notice first. And most of the time, especially if it's educational content, the answer should be the headline. The headline should be the star. Not your handle name at the bottom. Not some decorative, cute element. Not the photo in the background that completely overtakes the headline so I can't even read it. The headline should be the lead. It should be the star of the show.

The Grid View Test (Your New Best Friend)

One of the fastest ways I teach my students to figure this out is to go to the grid view in Canva. When you're working on a design, there's a little button at the bottom right of your design that says grid view (I think it's four little squares). You click that and it gives you this bird's eye view, this 500-foot view of the design. And that's kind of the size that it's gonna be when people are scrolling Instagram.

So ask yourself: Is your eye going to the star of the show? Is the headline clear? And if your design's pulling my attention away from the headline, then that's a problem.

When Everything Competes, Nothing Wins

I see a lot of carousel covers where the idea is good and the topic is super solid, but the design is doing so much that I don't even know where to look first. My eye is being pulled everywhere. Everything is competing. There are too many things competing for my attention, so the actual headline (the message, the star of the show) gets buried.

And that matters because on Instagram, no one is working that hard to figure out your post. My friend, they're just not. They are scrolling. They're passing it by because it's too much. So if it's not obvious what the post is about, you are losing people.

Inside The Content Coven, we have a monthly Make It With Me call where I help you apply these exact principles to your own templates. You'll stop staring at blank Canva screens and actually make content you're proud of. Join us here →

✍️ Why Fonts Matter More Than You Think (Sorry Not Sorry)

Fonts, my friend. And I'm sorry, fonts matter so much. They just do. And I know some people wanna treat fonts like they're only an aesthetic choice, but they affect whether your content feels easy to read or annoying to read, and that changes everything.

The Friction Factor

If your font is too small, too fancy, too close together (whether the letters are too close together or the actual lines are too close together), too scripty, or there's just too much text on the screen, it creates friction. And friction's usually enough to make someone keep scrolling. That's really it.

If I have to squint or tilt my phone or focus too hard or decode what your headline even says, dude, like… you've lost me. And I think this happens because a lot of people are trying to fit too much in. So instead of simplifying the message, they just shrink the font and cram it all in there and hope for the best. But then your content starts to feel dense and overwhelming.

The Hierarchy Question

The other piece of this is hierarchy. When I look at a slide, do I know what to read first? Do I know what matters the most? Is there anything helping my eye move through it? Do you bold the important parts? Do you break up sentences if there's a lot of body font, or is it just one big wall of sameness?

Because when everything looks equal, then nothing stands out. And this is absolutely affecting how people respond to your content. Not because they're sitting there thinking, "Wow, the typography choices here are really impacting my trust levels." But because people are always responding to how content feels. Does it feel easy, clear, grounded? Or is it cluttered and kind of exhausting?

So I'd rather you ask "Is this easy to read?" than "Is this pretty?" every time you create a piece of content for Instagram.

👤 The Human Element: Why Showing Your Face Builds Trust

Yeah, you better believe I absolutely think showing your face affects trust too. And I know some people are still telling themselves, "Oh, I need to book a brand shoot first" or "I can't afford it" or "I need better photos" or "My brand photos are too old." They need to wait until everything looks perfect before they start putting themselves in their content.

But no. You don't need brand photos to build trust. Trust me on this.

Selfies Beat Perfection Right Now

In fact, I'd actually argue that a selfie or face-to-camera reel does way more for trust than polished brand photos right now. Because it feels current and real and it feels like you and it feels human and it feels imperfect. And that's what's really connecting and working on Instagram right now.

That doesn't mean that every post has to have your face in it. I'm not saying that. But if your content is all graphics, all templates, all text all the time with no actual human connection point, I do think that's gonna change how the brand feels. Because part of the trust process is presence. People wanna feel like there's a person here and there's a real voice and a perspective and not just graphics floating around on the internet.

The Real Reason We Hide Behind Design

I think that sometimes people hide behind design because it feels safer than being seen. But safer is not always what is gonna get the best results. Sometimes the thing your content's missing is not another template. It's literally just more of you.

🎨 The Truth About Color Psychology (It's Not What You Think)

When it comes to color, I kind of have a different opinion here. No, there's not one magical color palette that's gonna build trust. I don't think beige automatically elevates your brand or black or white. I don't think bright colors automatically mean unprofessional. Obviously I have bright colors and I am professional. I think people oversimplify that whole conversation a lot.

Color's Real Job: Clarity and Feeling

But I do think color affects the feeling of your content, and I think color can either help with clarity or completely mess with it. So if there's not enough contrast, if text is hard to read, if your colors look nice in theory (you know, in little circles on a page) but they don't actually work inside templates or work on a phone screen, that's gonna be an issue.

For me, color is less about finding the perfect buyer psychology palette and more about asking: Is this helping the content land? Is the vibe I wanna portray and the person I want to attract and how I want to make them feel conveyed through my colors? Can people read it? Can they tell what the star of the show is? Does this make the message stronger?

Do my colors and my fonts and the design make it stronger or weaker? That's the better question, really. That's the point of this whole conversation.

💡 The Real Question: Is Your Design Helping or Hurting?

Your design is either helping your message land or it's getting in the way. That's really it. I think a lot of people assume better branding means making everything look more impressive, but most of the time it's really about making things clear.

Can I tell what the post is about? Is it easy to read? Do I know where to look first? Does it feel like there's an actual person behind this brand? And that's gonna matter a lot more than making the design more complicated.

The Quick Audit Questions

So if you've been feeling like your content looks off or it's not getting the response you want, I wouldn't start by asking how to make it prettier. I would start asking what might be making it harder to:

• Stop at

• Read

• Connect with

Does the headline need to be bigger? Are there too many words? Is the font doing too much? Are the colors not really pulling people in? Do you need more breathing room in the design?

And all that's really, really fixable.

If you're nodding along thinking "Yes, I absolutely open Canva, overthink every decision, spend 75 hours on a design, change the font 16 times," I've made something just for you. Inside The Content Coven, we now have a monthly Make It With Me call where I choose two Canva templates, show you exactly how I'd customize them, and then we co-work for 30 minutes while you make them your own. You get my feedback, you stop staring at blank templates, and you actually make the post. Join us here →

🔗 Resources & Links Mentioned in This Episode

• The Content Coven Membership - Monthly membership with live calls, Canva training, and the Make It With Me monthly call. Join at thecreativebodega.com/the-content-coven

• Canva Grid View Feature - Free tool inside Canva to evaluate your design effectiveness (look for the four-square button at bottom right of your design)

• The Visual Edit Program - Emily's program for personalized design feedback (mentioned as context for her design expertise)

• Listen to the full podcast episode - Available on all podcast platforms at pod.link/1797632954

• Follow Emily on Instagram - @the.creative.bodega for daily design tips and content strategy

✨ Your Design Can Build Trust (Starting Today)

Here's what I want you to remember: visuals matter. And when your design helps people understand the message quickly, trust it faster, and connect with the human being behind it, that's when your content's gonna get a whole lot harder to scroll past. And hi, that's the goal.

You don't need to become a designer. You don't need a brand shoot before you can start showing up. You don't need to spend 75 hours perfecting every Canva template. You just need to understand what your design choices are communicating and make sure they're working for you, not against you.

Clarity feels competent. When people can land on your content and instantly tell what it's about, that feels really good. It feels clean, it feels like you know what you're doing, and it makes them wanna stick around and keep reading. When they land on something and everything is competing, it just feels harder. And when something feels harder than it needs to, they're very likely moving on.

So take 30 seconds right now and look at your last Instagram post. Ask yourself: What's the star of the show? Is it easy to read? Does it feel like me? If the answer to any of those questions is "not really," then you know exactly what to work on next.

And if you want my eyes on your content with personalized feedback, come join us inside The Content Coven. We're a community of female solopreneurs who are done with content overwhelm and ready to create designs that actually convert. I think you'd really love the Make It With Me call.

Comment below: What's one design mistake you're going to stop making after reading this? I'd love to hear what resonated most with you.

Keep going. Keep showing up. Keep being beautifully, authentically you.