Why Design?
It seems as basic a question as one can ask. I am talking specifically about graphic design of marketing materials. Why do it?
You can write some words in MSWord, take a picture of your product, upload it onto your hard drive, import it on to the page, choose some pretty colors and a nice typeface, print it out on your desktop printer, or make a pdf and post it on your WWW site. Or even send it out for a high quality print job and get it out to your customer, all by yourself.
Or you can work with a designer which costs money.
Do (or why do) well designed marketing materials deliver a better ROI than somethng not well designed? What do you really know about it?—empirically. Probably not enough. There is not a lot of emipirical research about how deisgn works and probably most of what there is has serious methodological questions.
Very specifically the purpose of design is to effectively and purposely influence the communication between the business and its audience (usually customers but not necessarily). For the most part we believe it works. For example:1. People have feelings about how things look and feelings influence purchasing decisions. Design can communicate feelings.
2. Design can organize information—line length, sub head size, body copy size, leading, space before and after sub heads, i.,e. typography and layout can organize information to make it easier to read and understand.
3. Photographs, illustrations, tables and diagrams can communicate things that words cannot.
4. Generally successful businesses have a history of using good design. Obviously some of the success of Apple computer has been the result of their high design standards and the success of Nike is the consistent and creative use of their logo and graphics.
But most of what we know is intuitive. While some marketing professionals may make decisions on whether they like the layout or typface, others call up sales after three months and ask for the change in numbers. Yet the value of design can be difficult to measure quantatively, and in the end for everything in business there must be some sense of ROI.
How Does Design become an Investment and not an Expense?
For me design best realizes value if
1. Marketing sets and defines objectives,
2. Marketing develops a strategy to achieve those objectives, and
3. Design visually implements that strategy to optimize the communication in the presentation of information to realize marketing objectives.
This may be in the design of the product brochure, an advertising campaign, the corporate web site or the design of the corporate logo on the napkin at the corporate dinner. When marketing has developed clearly defined objectives and a strategy to realize those objectives, this serves as the standard to assess and direct the design process. This is when design becomes an investment and not an expense.
Three Levels of Design
For me there are three levels which design influences communication in marketing materials.
1. The immediate unconscious process of differentiation and identification.
2. The organization of information for communication.
3. Branding and positioning, the higher levesl.
Level One: Unconscious Decision
One of the basic tools that humans have is to differentiate and define things unconsciously and very quickly. This has played a major part in the success of human evolution. While human biology and natural selection play an important part in this, so has Culture (the anthroplogical meaning).
When you wake up in the morning, sit up in bed and put your feet on the floor you never think “Is this floor going to hold me.” but if the floor were to give, your body would differentiate and define what is happening—evaluate the situation— and take action, all without thinking.
In a similar way, in the interaction between a person and a thing, the person needs to define the thing and establish what his/her relationship is to it.
What is it and how am I related to it.
We do this unconsciously probably hundreds of thousands of times a day. We do not notice it until the unconscious process cannot do it and then it calls on the conscious process. You often hear the saying that “people don't want to work” and calling on the conscious process to get involved is asking the person to do stop what they are doing and do some work. When its a non-threatening or basicallly unimportant situation most of us just ignore it and move on with what’s important. If there is no unconscious warning or red-flag, we just go on to things we know are important.
This sounds very simple, but this is usually what differentiates professional design from unprofessional deisgn—the medium looks and feels right and does not raise a warning. We are ready to not discard it. Anytime the unconscious begins to ask the conscious to do some work, the conscious is looking for any reason to say no. In the case of marketing materials, the no is “its unimportant.”
Good design can also make the intial situation visually interesting and or literally interesting and create a stronger connection, but it does not do that without the “unconscious OK.”
Level Two: The Organization of Information
The organization of information is important in design for communication. Once the initial connection is created the viewer needs to be able to organize the parts into a singularity and at the same time understand the parts, how they are related to each other, where to begin, how to interact with the information, what’s my time commitment now (or later), etc. This also occurs without purposive thinking on the part of the reader. When the reader has to stop and think to answer these questions, he/she is thinking about how to interact, or how to read the specific piece and they move on, they get tired, whatever.
It sounds very simple, but when you see poor design, you see heads that don't have a good relationship to subheads, body copy, type size, line length, etc. Youmay see poor spacing and illustrations in the wrong place or wrong size. Type too small is difficult to read. A long line length for the size type is difficult to read.
For example, heads that do not work well with the body copy compete with the body copy for attention and the eye feels the tension and has to work to figure out what is the relationship between the subhead and body copy rather than just read it. Why doesn’t it feel comfortable? When the eye unconsciously feels this tension in the design it calls on the brain to work and figure it out and as far as the brain is concerned, “Don’t bother me, let’s get on to the next thing.”
When the reader has to think about how to read something instead of feel how to read it, they are not thinking about what they are reading.
While there may be “visual excitement” in the design which adds reader interest, its when the element which creates the visual excitement is doing the work of visual organization of information that the advertisement is connecting and communicating with the reader.
Good design uses visually interesting and subject meaningful design to organize the information so that the reader feels what the medium is, how to read it, and where to star and the reader enjoys doing it. In poor design the person cannot naturally feel how to interact with the medium and they have to think about how to read. Thinking how to read is the kind of work that people do not want to do and they move on.A marketing piece, such as an ad or a mailer, can be visually exciting, i.e. interest, even excite the eye, and not be read because it fails to organize the information appropriately so that the reader can naturally interact with the piece. I.e. it does not maximize the readiblilty. On the other hand, sometimes an ad is not meant to be read, just the feeling and identifying a feeling with the product or company is the purpose, but the design has to communicate the feeling.
Photographs, illustrations and diagrams can create visual excitement, organize information and communicate things that words cannot. At the same time visually dynamic photographs can attract the eye and yet not lead the reader to go any further. I think this is common when a photograph is a strong visual, attracts the eye, the reader says “WOW”, but its a metaphor for something in the copy which itself is a metaphor to understand the message of the copy. The reader has to understand the first metaphor, link it to the metaphor in the copy and then link the metaphor in the copy to the message of the ad. No matter how visually attractive the graphic is, it must do the regular work also.
Good design organizes the information for the maximum communication with the least amount of work on the part of the reader. The reader is not thinking about how to read but about what is being read.
Level Three: Brand and Position
Design works to build brand and can be used to position the company and/or the product. These are seperate. Quality is part of the Toyota’s brand, but they clearly position the Lexus and the Corolla differently. Yet both are considered quality products in their market because of the Toyota brand.
Both of these are difficult to do well. if you do Level One and Two you have a good shot at creating a successful marketing piece. In my opinion most professional designers get Level One. I think too many do not get Level Two, with the result that some visually exciting marketing pieces do not do the work needed to realize the marketing objectives.
But everyone wants to talk about how they are doing Level Three. Whenever the words Branding and Positioning come into play people begin thinking REALLY IMPORTANT things are happening.
Here is my definition of BRAND: Your brand is how your customer (or person in the audience) feels about you (product, company) when your name comes up in the conversation, but even before that do they bring your name up in the conversation. Brand is about both feelings and the behavior.
Positioning is amore specifc in that does your customer(or audience) understand the correct relationship between them and the product/company. Toyota is a good example. The Toyota brand is quality, but Lexus and Corolla are positioned differently.
I believe that the minimum step in (design wise) doing a good job at branding and positioning is not doing negative things. That is difficult neough. From a design perspective positioning and branding efforts are really unknown variables, often judged in a positive light, i.e. intellectuallly analyzed, after the company or product has been successful.
But developing a consistent and creative visual identity over a period of time works to develop a visual identity for company and product. Using visual elements to develop that visual identity which speak to the specifics of the customer relationship postiion both product and company. When people purchase the product and have a good experience with it, they are open to developing a relationship with the product and company. Design is the tool to visually build, maintain and grow that relationshp. Logo, color, common design elements are all visuall indictors that someone knows they are having an interaction with the company or product. Design not olny makes sure that these visual elements are there but does them in a way that is meaningful to the customer.
When the customer has a good experience with the product, it is design that enables the customer to identify the product with the company. It does this at the feeling level. And when the company introduces a new product it is design that can, at the feeling level, identify the prevous good experience with the one to come.Still design wise its hard enough not to do negative things and often its good enough just to avoid doing negative things.
An excellent job at branding and positioning requires a good product for the market, marketing needs to establish solid marketing objectives and well founded strategies to realize those objectives (preferably empirically based), and a work with a designer that understands those marketing objectives and strategies, and how to visually implement the marketing strategies “consistently and creatively” over a long time period.
Design can do this at both short and long term levels.
Short term level: If you believe that one of the selling points of your product is that is easier to use than competitors, and you have a corporate magazine, then in the articles, the designer could design a place for pull quotes which emphasize the ease of use. The designer can make them prominent and easy to read and the reader without even reading the articles, but just browsing through the magazine, gets the message. Photographs showing customers smiling while using the product communicate that the product is easy to use. In every project there are many simple diferent things the designer can do using typography, layout, photographs, etc. to implement marketing strategies to realize marketing objectives
Long term level: Develop an appropriate visually consistent design standard for all aspects of marketing and corporate communications and use it consistently and creatively and over time that visual look and feel will be associated, at both thinking and feeling level with the brand.
Still the number one essential thing for branding and positioning—have the appropriate product at the right price for the market. Great design cannot do that. And as essential, have a good set of marketing objectives and a strategies.With these good design can interact with your customers all by itself in a consistent and creative way that builds communication and bonds with your customers. It can communicate the quality of your product, the availability of your product and everything that is necessary to make it successful. As well it can communicate the integrity of your products and business.
A well designed ad or a brochure is like a piece of good music—It creates a tension, and resolves that tension by taking the audience through it and enjoying the experience. A three chord upbeat rock and roll song, a simple lyric country song and a laidback fifteen chord jazz song do the same thing but very differently. Chuck Berry, Hank Williams or Miles Davis, they all do it. And in good design there is no single successful solution. Different designers can implement marketing strategies successfully in very different ways.
But I can offer you something different and better. If you have read this far, you probably have some interest in my approach. If you are a VP marketing, I can understand your vision. And, I can work with your team, probably many of whom still need more experience to understand marketing, in a way that saves you time, remains consistent to your vision and teaches them how to work with design to implement marketing strategies.
If you are interested to learn more contact me at 510 713 7200 or email me at steve@naegeledesign.com.