As a graphic designer, in Iasi – Romania, in the marketing team, there are quite a few things that I have to understand so I can make my job right. Also from my freelance experience and from what I learned from other people here are the 5 best key points of a marketing graphic designer:
- Think about who is the final consumer of the product that you are creating. What sort of people will read the brochure, flier or other piece of publicity you create and buy the product(s) or services that you promote? A clear description of your target audience will help you gauge what sort of feel your design should have. The look of your design should always reflect the preferences of the customer, not your own preferences or the preferences of your team mates or your customer (if you are a freelancer).
- The message without emotions is like milk without the bottle. The message you are trying to send is sustained by the emotions you create within the final customer. What emotions should you convey? What specific things should you draw the reader’s attention to? Read your client’s copy carefully. Use the message of the copy, especially the headlines, to inspire the message of your design.
- The message has to be reinforced by your design. Is your design consistent with the messages in the copy? Can you increase the impact of the copy message in your design approach? If you’re designing a brochure for some computer software, and the dominant marketing message seems to be that the software is "easy to use", your design should reflect clarity and freedom, maybe with lots of white space and clear copy sections. In short, don’t rely on your client to brief you properly on what the design should achieve. Take the initiative to work it out yourself.
- Emphasize the benefits of the product. Demonstrate how good the product is through your choice of visual. Show how the product makes a real difference to people’s lives. Reread through the copy and make a note of all examples of what the product does for the user. Then think about how you can demonstrate people benefiting from the product in your graphics and choices of photos.
- Represent visually the product or a concept of the service. Show people using the product/service. Show happy customers. Publicity that shows people is proven to be the most successful at driving sales. Good publicity should encourage readers to imagine themselves using the product to show people of the same demographic using the product! Get as many pictures of the product as possible, and work these pictures into your design.
There are other important things to take care when designing a new piece of publicity marketing materials. Please feel free to share with us your ideas
