So you’re looking over your website, and you think to yourself, “Eh, this looks alright.” You may be on the fence about that rebrand the marketing department is mulling over. Perhaps you’re not really the creative type and don’t really “get” the hype. If you’ve got a great product, it doesn’t matter what your promotional materials look like, right? Well… not quite.
In fact, your brand’s design is absolutely pivotal to the success of your business – and becomes increasingly more relevant as competition and technology further evolve the ways in which we interact with our potential customers.
Here are three particular reasons why you need great – not just good – design for your business:
1: Legitimacy
You know that competition we alluded to? That comes with several thousand messages being sent to your audience, messages you’ll have to fight through to demonstrate your own value. If you don’t stand out, it’s likely that yours will be lost in the white noise. If you’re surfing the web in 2014 and run across a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated in a decade, what is your immediate reaction?
Many will dismiss your company immediately. You certainly don’t want your business to feel outdated or irrelevant to today’s needs. Great design also works to push beyond the basic standard. If someone handed you a truly unique or creative business card, you would likely be impressed with the care they took to make themselves memorable. Sometimes it’s all in the details.
2: Identity
Speaking of memorable, there’s a reason that branding professionals stress consistency! Merely slapping your logo on all of your materials, however, does not a brand make. Identity is about creating a voice for your company – both verbally and visually.
Great design will articulate that voice more effectively than a random template you found on the web.
It’s about understanding what differentiates your company from the rest of the pack, articulating what makes you you. Repetition with variation is a fundamental design term that really gets at the core of identity: your marketing materials should demonstrate a deep, dynamic story that never loses the quality that defines your brand.
3: Intimacy
We’re clearly not speaking about candlelit dinners or boxes of chocolates here, but rather the ability to emotionally connect with your audience. Visual imagery can elicit a response in your viewers where words can only scrape the surface – and much more quickly. In a world dictated by 6-second videos and character limits, an image’s ability to count for a thousand words makes all the difference.
Be intentional about how you want your customers to feel when you communicate with them, and embrace that feeling when approaching the design of your branding materials. Customer experience will set you apart from your competitors and foster trust in your company that no guarantee ever could.
Any great author will tell you it’s important to show, not tell. You want to engage your audience to invest in your company – with their time, money, and loyalty. Great design is a key element to getting you there – so believe us when we say that it’s absolutely worth it.
