Marketing in the modern day is a lot more sophisticated than it once was. Gone are the days of the traditional logo and a few lines of text. Today, marketing is all about targeting a specific demographic with the right message and doing so excitingly and engagingly that encourages interaction.
Graphic Design is one of the most potent and effective tools a company can have and is often overlooked as a form of marketing. Some companies think it is too time-consuming or irrelevant to their business, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Simply giving your company some graphics representing your brand will garner millions of impressions quickly, helping bring in new customers. Here are five tips for beginners to help get you started.
1. Keep it Simple
Your graphics don’t need to be complicated or revolutionary, but they do need to represent the brand in a way your customers will relate to. Some beginners try and overcomplicate a design with too many things and too much detail that a customer can’t even make out the most critical parts of the design. Keep your graphics simple and clean, with your brand name and logo being the focus throughout.
Use a simple, clean font that is easy to read and understand. A fancy, sophisticated font confuses people and makes it difficult for them to find information about your business. A simplistic, clean design doesn’t need to be bland. It just needs to represent your brand without getting in the way. Create a friendly, inviting graphic, and use your customers’ language to get their attention. Your message should be clear from the start.
2. Ensure Your Design is Mobile Friendly
Times are changing, and so are the ways people browse the web. Trends in mobile browsing and usage of smartphones have skyrocketed over the past few years. You must change how you think about your website design. Gone are the days when it made sense to have a separate website for desktops, another for other tablets, and yet another for smartphones. Your website must be designed to suit all the devices on which it will be viewed.
Use responsive design techniques to create a website that adapts itself to suit the device it is viewed on. It enables your content to be changed and reformatted to fit the device’s screen size, making for an optimal browsing experience regardless of the device your customer uses. A high-quality, mobile-friendly website is much more important than you think, especially in today’s digital marketplace.
3. Use a Consistent Theme
Your graphics need to work together as a whole to create a good design. Sometimes, graphics can clash and create a messy, confusing design. Keep everything you create within the same style, but don’t get stuck in a rut with the same old boring designs for each new project you are working on.
Look at your past projects and try to keep your future projects similar but not exactly the same. If customers can look at one of your graphics and recognize it as made by you, they will be more likely to trust your brand.
4. Kit Yourself up with Tools
Designers today have access to many powerful tools that make creating graphics much easier. Plugins and applications that help you to create better graphics in a short space of time are available for free and as software. You can use them right away on your computer. There is no reason why you shouldn’t invest in some quality software if you are serious about making your projects a success.
If you have a MacBook, you can find graphic design software for mac that allows you to create slick, professional-looking graphics for your business that your customers can easily recognize as yours. Make sure you invest in well-supported quality software. It should also allow you to work within a variety of design systems. This is essential if you create graphics for companies with different tools and branding.
5. Diversify Your Brand
Your brand has a unique voice and a unique design. Find a niche and stick to it. You need to target your audience from the start. Create graphics that appeal to specific groups of people and try to reel them in. Don’t make yourself too open to interpretation, as this can be difficult for people trying to find information about your business.
Make sure you include your brand name and logo in all your graphics so that no one doubts who created the graphic. Use a creative way to include your contact information so potential customers can find out how they can get in touch with you.
Conclusion
Have as much fun as possible when creating graphics. Creativity is a vital part of being a graphic designer, and there is no reason you should ever be bored or frustrated when working on projects. If you can find fun in your work, customers will see and feel it when interacting with your graphics.
