Graphic Design is Not Marketing

Graph­ic Design is not mar­ket­ing. Though this state­ment may ruf­fle some feath­ers, read on to learn why…

In mar­ket­ing you eval­u­ate num­bers, ana­lyze data and look towards improv­ing your sales or mar­ket­ing pres­ence using those fac­tors. Design is actu­al­ly very dif­fer­ent. Strate­gic design looks into cre­at­ing emo­tion­al con­nec­tions to humans — not num­bers. Using core design prin­ci­ples, we cre­ate inten­tion­al con­nec­tions through col­or, typog­ra­phy, com­po­si­tion. Above all, we care­ful­ly craft con­tent hier­ar­chy to help get the mar­ket­ing mes­sage across.

Imag­ine it like this: a busy room where every­one is yelling to get atten­tion and want their mes­sage heard. That set­ting is over­whelm­ing and high­ly inef­fec­tive — who can real­ly hear through all that chaos?!  Now apply this exam­ple to graph­ic design… when you see con­tent that is in your face with no clear struc­ture, it’s hard to fol­low along, right? Now imag­ine that in the mid­dle of the may­hem, some­one puts up a sign that is easy to read and cap­tures your atten­tion. It’s like­ly you’re going to actu­al­ly under­stand their mes­sage. Graph­ic Design can take the chaos of stand­ing out to a human-cen­tered con­nec­tion approach.

Graphic design is not marketing or pretty pictures

There is a mis­con­cep­tion (in some areas) that graph­ic design is just about pret­ty pic­tures and $99 logos. And it’s often, if not always, the last step in mar­ket­ing.  While graph­ic design is not mar­ket­ing, it’s very much a part of the strat­e­gy in mar­ket­ing. If you only call on your design­er to push out a quick job, it can actu­al­ly be counter pro­duc­tive to your goals. Involv­ing your design­er as you plan can be of crit­i­cal ben­e­fit. What’s key is that the design­er under­stands your brand essence and mar­ket­ing goals — that’s how they will cre­ate those emo­tion­al con­nec­tions and experiences.

Graph­ic design­ers need to under­stand the goal at hand to sup­port it with the right visu­als. If they don’t, you can end up with bland design that makes you think, “I could have done this in Pho­to­shop.” Yikes! Beyond this, it’s impor­tant to under­stand how con­nect­ed graph­ic design is with form­ing first impres­sions. The wrong design ele­ments can hurt — even tar­nish — that first impres­sion. While the right ele­ments can help build curiosity.

What you need to do to accomplish this:

Design and mar­ket­ing are actu­al­ly a part­ner­ship. They help one anoth­er! Hav­ing worked with many, many mar­keters, we’ve seen the pow­er of this link. We each become invest­ed in under­stand­ing our goals and can find bet­ter solu­tions and results. It’s far more effec­tive than hav­ing some­one whip up a last minute graph­ic. As a strate­gic design and brand­ing firm, our goal is to part­ner with clients and under­stand every angle of their goals, serv­ing the brand mission.

Remem­ber, you are com­pet­ing in a noisy world. Pret­ty graph­ics won’t make your mar­ket­ing (or brand­ing) stand­out, just like sta­t­ics or data won’t sell your brand. Lever­ag­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion and cre­at­ing emo­tion­al con­nec­tions to your audi­ence can. Graph­ic design is not mar­ket­ing, but it needs to be a part­ner to it in order to pro­vide strate­gic solutions.

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