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Whether you believe it or not, your marketing design has a direct and significant impact on the number of impressions, engagements, and conversions you get from your marketing campaigns. We are all aware of the importance of content marketing in retaining a clearly defined audience, but what about the importance of design in marketing?
Many businesses often place maximizing their ROI or increasing their revenue at the top of their priority chart but hardly ever put much thought into the role design plays in helping achieve that.
In just seconds, your ad’s design can leave a lasting impression on a prospective customer, which could be good or bad. Of course, preferably, you’d want it to be a good one so people will want to engage more with your business or at least want to learn more about what you have to offer.
Design indeed plays a major role in delivering a good and consistent brand experience. If you can’t confidently say that your marketing design is good enough to effectively communicate the value you’re offering or your advertisement’s message, then you should definitely keep reading.
In this article, we will discuss:
What is Marketing Design?
What is the Difference between Marketing Design and Brand Design?
Benefits of a Good Design in Marketing
Types of Marketing Design
10 Tips for Great Marketing Design
In marketing, the design goes beyond just brand aesthetics like images, unique fonts, logos, and page layout, but goes as deep as making connections between your company, brand, and customers.
It is all about sending a message across to the audience and promoting what a company has to offer in a visually appealing way.
You can consider your marketing design as the face of your business. It is necessary that the materials used in design goin line with the company’s visual identity, as marketing and design should go hand in hand.
It’s possible to write an excellent copy and target a very clearly defined audience, but it still doesn’t succeed. At the same time, it’s possible to create an incredibly stunning ad and it ends up not converting people.
This is why marketing and design have to work together. Despite how important design is in marketing, many businesses still overlook it and end up with designs that don’t thoroughly represent the brand.
Young companies often make the mistake of taking on the job of design themselves irrespective of their lack of skills in that area and limiting their designs to whatever resources they have, rather than getting the help of a dedicated professional.
While this may seem profitable in the short run as a result of reduced costs, the benefits you’d get from investing more ina great design are far more and it could save you from the pitfalls that come with weak or even disastrous designs.
Brand design is the company’s identity; it represents the company or the business everywhere you go. This includes logos, identifiable colors, or anything else included in a brand kit.
Marketing design is how you represent the products, services, and other offers through advertising. Most of the time, the marketing design incorporates copy or graphics that describe the product. The design should also be cohesive with your logo and branding, to ensure a consistent look from one campaign to another.
Marketing design incorporates promotional strategies, while the brand design is the unified look of your company representation. In a sense, brand design falls under Marketing Design.
Good marketing designs go a long way in garnering attention to your product and enhancing communication between your brand and your target audience.
You can’t have good marketing if your designs are terrible and don’t send the right messages across to the audience. With that said, below are some of the many benefits a great design has to offer:
In marketing, there is always fierce competition across the various digital platforms. And one of the major factors that sets a brand or product aside from its competition is its marketing designs.
A good marketing design piques the interest of the audience and makes them willing to engage. No one wants to look at boring ads that make them yawn.
Eye-catching and beautiful designs that make people say “wow” are what make your marketing visible.
According to Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like; design is how it works.
Everyone knows that one of the main goals of a marketer is to drive more engagements to their products and convert those engagements into paying customers. Design is what determines your customer’s emotional response and their decision to engage with your brand.
The design of your brand is the face of your business that the world sees. You would notice that all of the world’s most established brands have their designs unique to them.
These brands have a logo, font, and color scheme that you picture whenever you think of them. Elevating a brand to the top is not something that happens overnight.
Several factors need to be put in place to make that happen, and a great marketing design is definitely one of them. A work is put into finding and creating the perfect design that roots your brand in the world. However, once you’re able to find the right visual elements that evoke the intended emotions in your audience and show your brand identity, you’re on your way to becoming established.
Investing in an experienced designer to help redesign your website or create a logo for your brand may seem expensive, but it is worth the cost. Hiring a good designer would help you get the maximum results you desire. Spending a few extra bucks to get a good design is a step in the right direction because you get all of your money’s worth.
Designing is such an important aspect of your business that should not be done by just anyone. So if you want to achieve success in marketing, you should consider investing in excellent marketing designs.
Design determines the first experience a person will have with your brand. If the first impression is bad, then your brand may lose credibility and trust, resulting in lesser engagements and of course, reduced conversion rates.
A great marketing design, on the other hand, would make consumers feel more confident about your brand and give your business the trust that’s needed to keep moving forward.
There are several types of graphic designs in marketing, as there is no single way to communicate ideas through imagery, form, color, and typography using visual elements.
Each type of graphic design has its own focus and often requires a precise set of design skills and techniques. Before going on to hire a professional designer for your company’s marketing venture, you should understand the different types of designs in marketing so it serves as a guide in making the right choice.
Advertising graphic design is a kind of marketing design that deals with the formation and organization of the visual artwork employed in advertising products and services.
In short, it deals with the look of an advert. It can be pictures or words, but they are used to show what is being promoted. This type of design is probably what you think of when you hear the word ‘design’ in relation to marketing.
Under this category, you would find designs like brochures, slide decks, infographics, social media graphics, banners, newspaper and magazine advertisements, email marketing templates, digital advertisements, and content marketing, which are all applied in promotion and branding.
These design types can be distributed through various channels like blogs, social media, and email, for the main purpose of persuasion. We all know that visual content is engaging, which makes it very beneficial to companies in their marketing schemes.
Advertising design specialists are not just great at creating designs, but also know how to effectively sell a product and capture the consumer's mind through visuals.
Many companies, both big and small, bank on effective graphic designs that represent their brand and speak to their audience, to influence the consumers’ buying decisions. Every company should have a professional team in charge of advertising graphic designs. Companies who can’t hire a permanent designer in their team can hire design agencies(like ours!) to do the work for them at a much lesser cost than retaining a full-timer.
Let’s have a look at companies that succeeded with the advertising designs for a better benchmark of the power of design.
Social media has been established as a moving juggernaut in recent years. There’s no argument that most of the world today makes use of social media for a considerable amount of time daily. So it’s no surprise that social media platforms are one of the best arenas for marketing campaigns.
A beautiful marketing design is indeed important for this form of advertisement, especially on picture dominating platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. A good social media marketing design should instantly give the viewers an idea of what you have to offer, and this JustFab’s campaign ad implemented just that.
Consumers who come across JustFab’s ad while scrolling through their Instagram page would immediately notice that this ad is all about a shoe giveaway, even without reading the post caption.
Those already familiar with the brand may even instantly also get an idea of the ad owner just from the blend of colors. On this advertising design, you would notice how a handful of words can be impactful.
The design is very simple, yet very effective. It has a good color contrast with the colors for the brand, is very readable, and as you can tell, is professionally done too.
Email marketing is one of the many aspects of internet marketing, with a huge visibility advantage over social media. Many users are more likely to see an ad sent to their email than an ad that appears on their social media page. This, however, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put in as much effort as you would in your social media ad. Design is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of email marketing.
Although your headline is very important for making consumers open your email, the designs you implement are a big determining factor in whether they will pay further attention to your email or not. Boring emails never get a second look. Usually, email marketing implements more than one graphic design at a time.
Boxycharm’s email marketing design is a good example of how it should be done. Let’s look at the different graphic designs in one of their email marketing campaigns.
In this email ad by BoxyCharm, they start with a well-designed promotion containing simple and straightforward information. The truth is, many consumers may still not read all of the text written, and that’s why the designer made sure to highlight the most important information.
You would notice that the headline has two words, ‘September Boxycharm’, in a bigger and bolder font than the rest, showing that it is the main message.
There’s also an eye-catching bubble with an arrow to indicate to the viewers that more awaits them at the bottom of the page.
Even if a viewer can’t read all of the text in this picture, with the aid of the well-structured design, they will at least instantly get two messages – the email is about Boxycharm’s September package and that they need to scroll down to learn more and get a surprise.
In the rest of the email ad designs, Boxycharm uses attractive graphics to clearly show the viewers what they’ll begetting.
A lot of times, marketing graphic designs work more effectively when there is an offer attached to them. Without having to read much, viewers of this Boxycharm ad can instantly tell that they are being given a special offer that must be used quickly.
The visuals describe the offer’s scarcity, along with the product’s importance, which is a great way to keep the viewers engaged and make them willing to take action fast. If the same information were relayed through just text, it definitely wouldn’t have the same effect on people.
Oftentimes when starting a business, business owners overlook the importance of a corporate design but still go ahead and invest a significant amount of resources into other aspects like brand recognition and differentiation.
We can all agree that every business, irrespective of its size, has a unique story to tell in form of its vision, mission, and strengths. This is where the corporate design comes in.
The Corporate design also referred to as Visual Identity design, comprises visual elements such as logos, color palettes, icons, style guides, typography, and any other graphic design element that visually defines a brand at a basic level including its vision, mission, values, and strengths.
This kind of design is similar to traditional graphic design but goes a bit deeper in meaning and function. You could regard it as a subset of graphic design.
Companies make use of corporate designs to draw a connection between a brand and its audience, as this type of marketing design covers two major elements – design and branding.
The visual identity of a company communicates a lot about its personality and essence to the audience and play sa huge role in determining how they want the brand to be perceived.
For this reason, corporate design should betaken seriously by every organization and should remain consistent as consumers respond more positively to a brand they can recognize.
In order to achieve this consistency, the designers will have to create a design guideline based on the company’s logos, image libraries, typography, and color palettes, which must have already been previously created with the contribution of brand stakeholders, called a Brand Kit.
With the help of this Brand Kit, the organization’s visual brand identity will be applied consistently through the present and future designs. Due to how important this type of marketing design is, you would often find it used in combination with other marketing design types.
Headspace
The Headspace Meditation App’s visual identity is a very cheery color palette that accurately reflects the purpose of the product, which is to make people feel calmer and sleep better.
The colors used by this brand were carefully selected to evoke a sense of calmness in consumers, and bring joy.
Take note of the choice of colors. They are all connected to the brand’s identity. From the images above, you would also observe that although Headspace is an app, its visual identity extends to its website and Instagram page.
The typography and icons also have a specific theme that identifies with the brand and ensures a cohesive experience with every piece of content material from this brand.
Many companies in the nonprofits industrydon’t put much thought into their corporate design. But Parkinson’s Foundationhas a unique and visually appealing corporate design that reflects the excitingand dynamic qualities of the organization.
Its interesting and rather unique logoabsolutely represents what the company is all about. The P is actually anoutline of a person facing sideways, and inside it is a depiction of the brain.This represents what the organization is about -- a group in support of peoplesuffering from Parkinson’s Disease, which is a neurological disorder.
The company’s vibrant color bluecommunicates to people an excitement for life that they work hard to support.
McDonald's corporate design represents the brand’s playful, youthful, fun, and value-focused identity.
Everyone loves McDonald's because of the reputation it has built over the years. This can be attributed not only to itsquality of services but also to its branding and marketing techniques with itsvisual identity playing a significant role.
The red and yellow color palette and the warm golden arches with the typography 'I'm lovin' it' make up the McDonald’s logo. Its logo accompanied by its other branding elements duly describes the upbeat and fun nature of this company and gives consumers a warm and familiar sense when they come across it.
Furthermore, they banked on the use of red and yellow, which are colors that represent something delicious according to Color Psychology.
This kind of design has nothing to do with nature as you may think. Environmental Design commonly known as Environmental Graphic Design aims to send a message across to audiences in a specific spatial context.
This is achieved through the combination of several elements such as color, pattern, and material, with the architecture, landscape design, interior design, graphic design, and industrial design of the brand.
With the right application of environmental design, people feel connected to certain places and find them memorable, motivational, informative, exciting, or easier to navigate.
In other words, Environmental Design enhances the purpose of a place and a person’s experience.
Originally, the main purpose of environmental designs is to give signage or visual clues to visitors and make wayfinding easier. However, its use in organizations goes way deeper than that and as far as telling a story or relaying a meaningful message to visitors.These kinds of designs include murals, office branding, signage, event or commercial spaces, exhibitions, architectural designs, and stadium branding.
Payfactor’s Commercial Space
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Payfactor's commercial space is a good example of a well-designed commercial space. From the picture of the lobby, you can see the company’s visual identity splashed all over the place to give everyone in that space a good sense of comfort and familiarity.
The graphic design on the window helps portray the brand’s identity without blocking visibility, and the graphics on the floor give visitors a warm welcome into the environment. You would notice that the logo is also implemented into the reception desk and the lighting. These little visual identity incorporations may seem irrelevant, but they all come together to fulfill the purpose of a good environmental design.
The inner space of Payfactor’s commercial environment also features more of the company’s brand colors and patterns, for familiarity. Apart from creating a sense of familiarity with visitors, environmental designs also serve as a means of relaying or reinforcing messages. In this inner space, for instance, the word 'Revolutionize' is designed in bold to reinforce the organization’s mission.
Motion design also referred to as Multimedia design, is a relatively new kind of graphic design that has become a popular choice for many marketers and graphic designers. In the past, this kind of marketing design was reserved for TV and film due to the number of resources required to create it. However, in recent times, its use has extended to the digital marketing world as a result of technological advancements.
Motion design involves the creation of moveable elements like logos, animated videos, tutorial videos, GIFS, animated websites, advertisements, internet banners, and animated texts, with the aim of communicating to and delighting the audience at the same time.
These pieces of digital graphics that create the illusion of motion can be found across all digital platforms today and have proven to be a very effective way to market a brand and get messages across to consumers.
Slack is a free product that makes it possible to easily communicate with everyone on your team in one place. As away of making its users understand how the software can be of great benefit to them, Slack created an animated video.
Of course, the information given in the video could have featured a person on the screen talking about all the benefits, but where is the excitement in that?
Slack’s animated video is so welldesigned that anyone watching it won't easily get bored. The visually excitinganimations keep the viewers excited as they learn about all the amazing features the product has to offer.
At the end of the video, they are left happy and with enough information to be willing to try the product.
Handwrytten is a company that offers physical handwritten letter services to individuals and businesses. Its whole website is animated to add a sense of life to it.
On Handwrytten’s homepage, you would see some animations that not only make the page look interesting but also quickly lets visitors know the purpose of the product, which is writing letters.
The animated letter robot scribbling something with a pen really says it all. As such, viewers of this website learn something about the company while being entertained, and that is the purpose of motion graphics.
When visitors come across this beautifully designed and sophisticated website, they are motivated to look around further and learn more about the product.
This marketing design type deals mainly with the interfaces through which users interact with and experience a product. UI and UX designs are closely related terms, but with different meanings and focus.
While UI, which stands for User Interface, defines the specific interfaces through which users interact with a website or app, UX (User Experience) describes the experience the users have during the process of interacting with the interface.
Since these terms are related, many times the same designer can function for both roles. UI and UX designers should be responsible for creating visually pleasing experiences for users through the app, web page, and theme design, while also making sure that the product actually solves a problem through usability testing, digital prototypes, and user flows.
Good UI and UX designs should be aesthetically pleasing and with easy functions. It’s very important that your brand’s webpages, app, dashboard, game interface, or theme design on WordPress or Shopify, appeal to the senses of your audience either by sight or hearing.
A good design takes into consideration every element a user will possibly interact with such as buttons and menus and ensures it is thoughtfully designed to optimize usability.
Lunya’s website
Lunya is a company that deals with women’s sleeping wear, and their website has a good UI and UX design you could learn a thing or two from. A business’s homepage is a very important aspect of marketing.
When users land on your website either directly or through an ad, what they see and experience on your homepage plays a huge role in determining their decision concerning your brand.
Lunya’s website is a good one because it not only contains stunning designs on its homepage and through the rest of the website but is also very easy to navigate and use. It uses high-quality and clean images for the background and keeps the site uncluttered and simple. There is also a clear call to action button (shop sleepwear) and the site is user-friendly.
Current’s app design
The Current platform was created for teenagers to have access to a modern parent-controlled bank with a debit card. This platform aims at encouraging good financial decisions in teenagers and making them easily understand financial responsibility.
Although Current is into the financial niche, which ordinarily, should have a rather serious looking brand identity, they kept their key demographic in mind. You would see that the app’s design appears less stiff and stuffy like a typical financial app, but brighter, with cooler fonts and unique backgrounds.
This suits the brand’s target demographic perfectly well and greatly enhances users’ experience. From the screenshots, you would see the Current app has a pretty simple and straightforward UI, with all actions to take clearly defined. The UI and UX design of this brand’s app not only attracts new users but also keeps the already converted ones.
Your business’s website is very important and can be considered a digital salesperson. This is because your website has the power to attract potential customers and increase your rate of conversions.
It is worth investing in a professional designer to build an effective website for your company. Such designers design a user interface for a website and then translate the designs to coding language. You can say that web designers are like UI designers but with the extra knowledge of coding.
Landing pages, website home pages, and hubpages on websites are all examples of front-end parts of a website that should be very properly designed, and this takes into consideration the page layouts, choosing the most effective typography, and images.
Although there are several easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builders, nothing beats investing more for a professional and original web design for your business. A good web design always pays better in the long run.
Muzzle’s landing page
Landing pages in marketing are like entry points for new users. So why is having a good landing page design important? Well just like the website design, the landing page determines if you’ll get new users or not.
Landing pages are typically used for lead generation so a good landing page with a beautiful design will have a higher chance of generating quality leads. If you’re trying to promote a new product or get leads, you could probably learn a thing or two from Muzzle’s awesome landing page.
Muzzle is an app that silences on-screen notifications on Mac books. This company’s landing page hilariously makes use of motion graphics, to convey a direct message to visitors without much use of words. Visitors on their landing page are immediately bombarded with a lot of notifications in the upper left corner of the page.
This visual design on the landing page has a funny tone and also quickly conveys the usefulness of the app. The design of this landing page is very thoughtful, with a good layout, the right images and animation, and very effective and concise typography. Users visiting this landing page for the first time instantly understand why they need the product, and this pushes them to act.
Goldman Sach’s content hub
A content hub is a kind of landing page specially created to give visitors and prospects access to a portal leading to all your business’s expert content. A good content hub should have a list of all your content including articles, webinars, e-books, white papers, podcasts, and any other kind of content your business produces.
The idea of giving prospects access to all your content on a landing page is so that they could easily filter and move onto precisely what they want to see as quickly as possible while learning the best way to engage with you. Goldman Sach’s content hub is an example of one of such landing pages that has all the qualities of a well-designed one.
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Our Thinking is a content hub by Goldman Sachs that features audio, editorial content, and video on many different topics related to finance, which is the niche the business is in.
The page’s design is very properly structured, allowing easy navigation and understanding. Elements like the menu button at the top of the page featuring categories and subcategories are part of what a good web design is all about. Prospects who land on this stunning page can very easily find their way around on its super user-friendly interface and enjoy a good user experience.
Marketing can be a tricky business. There are so many rules to know, and new strategies come out every month. But with the right marketing design, you can get your message across quickly and concisely without breaking any of those pesky rules. Below are some useful tips you could apply to ensure your marketing design turns out well:
Designing in marketing should not be about what looks good to you, it is about what looks good enough for your targets to make a purchase. The imagery you create in your campaigns should match the demographic of your target persona. How to do this? Make some research on what your target persona is. If you’re just starting a business, this is one of the first things you need to check off your list.
Establishing brand credibility is one of the major goals of new brands of brands not quite popular. To do this, use a clean and simple marketing design. Do not follow the novice instinct to fill up your space with lots of images. Avoid jampacking your space with texts and graphics. If you do clutter your space, ask yourself what elements are really useful. This would help you eliminate unnecessary elements and keep your design clean and simple.
Draft a plan of the things you need, whereto find the resources, and most importantly, how to do it. If you need software or your target audience demographics, prepare them in advance before starting your designs. If you a smooth workflow, you need to follow a well-made plan and change things as you progress.
Design tools give access to hundreds of amazing fonts and you can be tempted to use all the fonts you can imagine in your designs, but, using too many fonts in your designs can be a bad thing. There is a limit to the number of fonts acceptable when designing. At most, only a pair of similar fonts are allowed to avoid outstanding differences.
When you choose a font, it should represent your business. If you want to make some visuals, make sure you make one that suits your main font. Do not use Comic Sans in your designs, it’s an amateurish font.
Contrast adds several elements to your artwork or design. These elements include drama, interests, and variety. You need to capture the interest of the audience first before you can keep their attention. The contrast gives you the power to do just that.
To apply contrast to your design, make use of size (big and small), texture (smooth and rough), colors ( light and dark), alignment ( left, bottom, right, up) etc.
Applying the right amount of contrast can create stunning visuals that make your marketing materials more interesting to your audience. Here are some tips to help you apply contrast to your designs:
- Make the main message bigger than the other elements of your visuals
- The colors on your visuals should be in line with the emotions transmitted to your audience.
- Ads with textured backgrounds are more likely to get reactions from your audience.
White space helps you avoid forcing too much information on your audience and keeps your work professional. White doesn’t mean a white background. It could be any pattern, photo, or solid color. White space is basically what is behind the elements of your visuals. It gives dynamism and balance to your design and also makes it feel less clustered.
Communication is the most important goal of marketing design. If you create a design with stunning visuals but poor readability it would just be a waste of time and resources. Always place readability before beauty.
It’s normal to want colorful visual content, but using a lot of colors, especially colors that don’t match can spoil your design. It is advisable to keep using your brand’s colors and avoid using too many colors. Basic knowledge of the color wheel would also help in this aspect.
Another aspect of color in marketing design is the psychology of color otherwise known as the color theory. Using this in your designs will determine the response you get from your customers. Each color has its meaning in design and creates an emotional reaction in people. Colors attract attention and pass the tone of the brand without saying a word.
Here are some colors and their meanings for a better understanding of the color theory:
- Red -Energetic, attention-grabbing, aggressive, and exciting
- Orange -fun, childlike, playful, modern, and happy
- Blue -reliable. Trustworthy, and secure
- Yellow -cheerful, friendly, and positive
- Green -restful, and refreshing
- Brown -stable, and secure
- Purple -mysterious, and sensual
- Gray -classic, timeless, and soothing
- Black -elegant, bold, and powerful
- White -innocent, simple
When designing your marketing content, you don’t have to keep your information in the center always. Make use of different alignments - left, right, or justified but make sure your content remains readable.
Always make sure your marketing design follows your brand. Consistency helps keep your brand name. You should always include elements that are exclusive to your brand. This will solidify your brand’s presence and increase brand credibility.
Design is one of the most important aspects of marketing. Companies invest a lot of money into their branding and logo design, but they also need to be mindful of what that design looks like in regards to their campaigns.
Design is key for creating an image, making sure your corporate identity remains consistent across all mediums. It is not just something that you add when it's convenient. It is the backbone of your marketing, and it should never be an afterthought.
Marketing designs come in many different forms, from website designs to commercial space designs to even print designs. Irrespective of the form of marketing design, they are all created for one important purpose or the other in marketing a brand.
Knowing about marketing design and its types is important as a business owner or decision-maker because even if outsourcing to a professional graphic designer, you should still know your onions to ensure you hand your project over to the right specialist for your business.
Speaking of outsourcing your design, the key to getting the design that you want is to consult consistently with the team and your designer. That’s where Instacap can help.
Instacap allows you to deftly leave feedback on the design at the exact spot where you want the changes to reflect. You will also be able to see other team members’ comments on the design, making for amore efficient design creation and adjustment process.
It's always best to incorporate various types of these designs in your marketing, but all with a consistent purpose and established set of guidelines to communicate effectively with your target audience.
The benefits that come with good marketing designs are indeed many. If you want to invest in the design aspect of your business’s marketing, we’re here for you! Let’s watch your company grow steadily with design that effectively captivates your audience.
