Graphic Design Agency: Everything You Need to Know

Graphic design is one of the mediums that is gaining massive momentum recently. Magazines, websites, product labels, and billboards. No matter wherever we go or whatever we do, we are completely engulfed by graphic designs. It has become a part of our everyday lives, especially for businesses. Every budding and well-established business in the market is leveraging graphic design to cut through the clutter, garner the attention of the right audience, and win over the international prestige.

If you want to know in and out about graphic design, how it can light up a fire under your marketing campaigns, and what are the key factors you need to consider while hiring a branding firm for your business, then dig into this blog to get all the luscious details.

What is graphic design?

Logo design, UI and UX design, identity design, packaging design, web design, and motion design are the things that come to our minds when we hear graphic design. But what exactly is graphic design? It goes beyond just the mix and match of colors, elements, and typefaces. Graphic design is a strong and powerful way of communicating your brand message visually, striking a chord with your audience and inciting them to take the desired action.

Types of graphic design

Graphic design is one parasol term used to describe anything related to creating a visual identity for your brand. But there is more to our perception of a just logo, website, or animation design. Based on the variations in the skills, techniques, and software, Graphic design is majorly broken down into eight main categories.

1. Brand & Visual identity Designs

Every brand has a unique story to tell and impress its audience. Visual and brand identity is how every brand conveys its brand message, sets the tone, and creates a rapport with the audience.

Brand identity is the soul of your business and it represents the internal aspects of your brand. Such as your brand’s mission, brand personality, emotion, experience, and brand voice. Whereas visual identity is the physical appearance of your brands such as the logo design, colors, typefaces, and other elements. Brand and visual identity, together, create a stellar image for your brand.

2. Marketing & Advertising Designs

Marketing and advertising materials can either drive in or drive away conversions for your business. Billboard ads, social media ads, trade show banners, website banners, brochures, flyers, posters, email newsletters, email signatures, etc., are some examples of marketing and advertising materials. Every marketing collateral you see around you speaks the story of the brands. You score a point against your competition if you have a solid marketing strategy that conveys your brand story and attractive visuals. It not only increases the brand visibility and credibility but is also a major source to drive leads for the business.

3. User Interface Designs

Be it to edit the images you have captured during your memorable road trip, to place an order at your favorite boutique, to read the best seller book from your favorite e-reader, or playing the top video games, think about the plethora of applications you use every day. Your entire journey of opening your gadget, using the app to exiting the app is referred to as User Interface. Every design you see, feel, and experience while using the apps is called the User Interface (UI) design. A good UI design strikes the perfect balance between an aesthetic design with an easy-going technical functionality.

4. Corporate Identity Designs

Corporate identity is humanized form of your organization and anything that gives life to your brand falls under corporate identity. The fonts, colors, typefaces, and elements that you use to present your organization’s personality and tone are all examples of corporate identity. The company logo, website design, stationery, merchandise, packaging designs, etc., are all examples of corporate identity designs. It represents how you present your brand both inside and outside your organization. If you want to cut through the noise and represent yourself as ambassadors in your field, you should start building your own innovative corporate branding identity designs before barging out in the market.

5. Publication Designs

Any piece of audio or visual content published for a wider audience through public distribution is referred to as publication design. With the boom of digital evolution, publication designs have taken a drastic transition over the years. Books are metamorphosed into e-books, magazines are transformed into e-magazines and weekly journals are turned into email newsletters and blogs.

Whether it is traditional publication designs or digital publication designs, the role of graphic design is as vital as ever. With an impressive cover design layout, wise choice of typefaces, colors, imageries, and elements, a publication designer helps enhance the readability of your content and set the voice for your content and brand. Check out the evolution of graphic design.

6. Animation Designs

Animation and motion graphics are all the rage among marketers these days. Time and again it was proven by research and results that motion graphics always have an upper hand over static visuals in hooking up the attention of the audience.

So, what are motion graphics? Motion Graphics are nothing but animated illustrations and designs that strikes a powerful connection with your audience. It may be explainer videos, product tutorials, animated films, banner gifs, animated advertisements, animated logos, etc., When you have a complex product or service that you want to sell to your audience or break the communication barrier with relatable content, motion graphics holds the power to do the magic.

7. Illustrations Designs

Many assume that both graphic design and illustrations are all the same, but in reality, they are poles apart. Graphic designs are created with the intention to communicate your brand message and find solutions for your audience’s pain points visually. It can be a manipulated asset or a fusion of elements. Whereas illustrations are personal and relatable elements that add emotions to your brand story. They are conceptual and born exclusively out of the designers’ imagination and artwork.

If your goal is to be distinct and unique, then customized illustration designs can set the mood and tone for your brand. Check out the difference between Illustrator and Photoshop.

8. Environmental Designs

Any graphic designs that make spaces more lively, informative, and memorable by connecting people and places are a part of environmental graphic designs. The visual cue you spot at an event, hospital, or street post that guides you to your destination are all examples of environmental designs. It makes the user’s experience more exciting, informative, and easier to navigate.

Importance of graphic design in digital marketing

For any entrepreneur, their product or service is unique. They go to extra lengths in telling the world about how unique their product/service is and the value that they can bring to their target audiences. They use different mediums and strategies to ensure that their audience gets wind of their brand.

Graphic design and marketing are the perfect duos that go hand in hand in achieving this goal. Innately, humans are visual animals and a visual message reaches the audience 60,000 faster than any text message. With the perfect combination of colors, elements, fonts, and photos, the graphic design conveys the brand message loud and clear to the audience. Here are some of the reasons why businesses are playing the keeps when it comes to graphic design. Check out the guide why graphic design is important for small businesses.

Build Brand Identity

Akin to humans, brands too have their own personality and style and it differentiates your brand from the competition. The targetted audience can spot the brand from anywhere based on your unique style and tone. Let’s take some notable brands such as Apple, RedBull, Nike, Mc Donalds, or Channel as examples. Anyone can relate to the brand’s style and tone by simply taking a look at its typeface, color, or logo.

With the help of graphic design, you can build a unique style and tone for your brand.

Enhances Sales

Designs have the potential to make or break your business. Through well-designed and first-rate designs, your target audience gets the message that your brand delivers only top-notch services. For example, websites are the first thing your prospects visit when they hear about your brand. If you have a well-designed website design, it persuades your audience to spend more time on the website to learn more about your brand and influence them in making the right decision to purchase your product or service. If you have a cluttered or poorly designed website, it will drive them away.

Illuminate Your Product/Service

Amidst all the rat races, there is an ever-increasing demand to capture the attention of the audience. You need all the unique ideas and creative skills to shed more light on the product and stay ahead of the competition. With the help of motion graphics and short videos, you can rapidly put together all your product features in a visually appealing way. Let’s have a clear idea about what is a digital marketing agency.

What is a graphic design agency?

We know by now that graphic design is quintessential for your business. Graphic design is a skill anyone can learn but only with innate skills can take it to the next level. There are myriad of services that require varied skills to frame a solid brand strategy. It requires mastery over the tools and creativity to build a unique visual identity for your brand. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and that’s where the role of a graphic design agency comes into play.

Graphic design agencies hone these skills with professional training and experience. They work hand in hand with brands of all sizes and shapes in understanding their business in and out, pinpoint their business objectives, formulate a branding strategy and execute them in the form of world-class design. They help in jutting out a professional image for your business in the form of visuals and building a long-term relationship with your audience. Believe it not, the best graphic design agency can reap more profit for your business than you can reckon.

What are the services graphic design agencies cover?

There is nothing set in touchstone when it comes to graphic design agencies. They are labeled with different names based on the services they offer. Creative agencies offer full-blown creative solutions that include market research, reify concepts, and bringing them to life. Whereas, graphic design studio typically works only on design deliverables. Though graphic designs are the core services they offer, their service combination varies based on the trends in the market, business demands, and internal structure. Check out some of the creative agencies that are rampant in the market,

Full-blown digital agency

They offer a complete creative strategy for the brands and campaigns. They do the market and data research to understand the customer behavior and their demands, formulate a creative strategy and campaigns and get cracking with the stunning creatives that drive leads for the brand. They focus more on technological aspects than the creative aspects.

Based on the results they receive from the campaigns, they optimize the strategies and creatives. They offer growth strategies, content strategy, brand creation, art direction, and brand activation along with end-to-end creative services. For the brands that settle upon driving leads digitally, digital agencies can be a godsend option.

Creative Advertising Agency

Unlike the full-blown digital agencies, creative advertising agencies are full-service outsource the strategy and execution to the marketing agency, and focus completely on graphic design. They usually excel in logo design services, print design services, billboards, business cards, and other graphic design services.

For the brands that already have infallible strategies in place and a team to execute them, but are in need of creative assets, outsourcing it to a creative advertising agency would be the plausible option.

Branding agencies

Disparate to the creative ad agencies, independent branding agency focuses on building business strategies. It digs deeper into the brands to get the bigger picture of who they are, what they stand for, and how they can offer unique value to their target audience to devise a strategy. Whereas creative agencies focus on illuminating those strategies with appealing graphic design.

Interactive design agency

They focus mostly on the interface designs that enhance the experience of your online users. With outstanding design skills, they present your brand and content in innovative ways that instigate positive responses from the users. Their expertise lies in UI and UX design, web design, mobile app development, and web app development.

Scalable and on-demand design services

On-demand graphic design services are all the rage these days because of their accessibility and efficacy to outsource your graphic design services from any part of the world. They hire a pool of graphic designers who understands the nuances of the graphic design industry and delivers eye-catching graphics in the shortest span of time. The most alluring feature of these services is that they allow you to raise unlimited design requests and revisions. For the fraction of the cost you usually spend on any design agencies or in-house resources, you can receive a plethora of services and cancel them at any time you want.

It’s like having your own design team always on the beck and call and tapping them into your business to metamorphose your ideas into a custom-built brand identity.

All Time Design is one of the most sought-after on-demand graphic design services offering end-to-end creative solutions needed to scale their brand. By subscribing to our services, they were able to double up their creatives and cut creative costs by 50%. Schedule a free consultation with our service expert today! Explore the top graphic designers to follow on Behance.

5 things to consider while hiring a graphic design agency

Picking out the right graphic design agency for your brand can be a challenging affair, especially when you have so many options to choose from. If you think that you can make the choice by checking through their portfolio and website, well think again.

Though all the best graphic design companies work around creativity and art as their core services, they should possess the skill to understand your audience’s pulse and leverage it to your advantage. If you are not certain where to start your search or how to pick the right graphic design agency, take heed to our word of advice. We can vouch it will help you in making a wise decision.

1. Look for their portfolio

A portfolio manifests every capability and the skills creative agencies have to offer. If you are unsure about how or where to start your search, commence by collecting and evaluating their portfolios. Having an impressive portfolio and credible website is the bigger green signal you need to bring the agency on board.

While weighing their portfolios, inquire about the designer who executed the designs and their skills and experience in the industry. Check if they have the ability to deliver quality designs for your project. This will ascertain that you are matching up with the right graphic design agency. You can also check with their clients to know more about their experience. Check out the guide to creating a digital design portfolio.

2. Check out their range of services  

Many assume that all the creative agencies are the same and they all create visual designs. Graphic design is a diverse field and so are the services provided by the individual agencies. While an agency that excels in traditional design services may not have an idea about the digital landscape. There are agencies that may focus only on creating the brand strategies but may not execute them.

In order to save yourself from expending your resources with the wrong team, it’s astute to run comprehensive research on the range of services the agencies offer and go for the one that aligns with your visual goals.

3. Know their design process

We hate when we miss deadlines and a high-potential deal as a consequence. Don’t we all? We firmly follow a solid project management process to make sure that everything is intact and the same goes with the graphic design process as well. When hiring an agency, raise questions about their internal design and project management processes. Do they have a modern infrastructure and what are the tools they use to manage the projects and deliverables?

Trust us, this could save you from a whole lot of missed deadlines later.

4. Start off with a trial project

Don’t shy away from asking for a trial project. Even if it is something simple and a straightforward project, it will help you in gauging the designer’s ability and skill. How aligned are their thoughts with your brand and visual goals and how professionally are they handling your requests? You might have to check them all before divulging yourself into a long-term relationship with the agency. What better way to do that than working on a trial project?

5. Find out their mode of communication

Concise and clear communication is an integral part of the creative process. Misinterpretations may mess things up and boil down to an unpleasant partnership. You might have creative ideas that you would like to pass on to your creative agency while they may interpret them in a different way altogether. The end result may not be the supposed one. Thus it’s important to have clear communication with your agency. Also, you can check out the guidelines on how to hire graphic designers.

Do they have a seamless communication process in place?

Do their work hours align with your working hours?

Are they flexible for catch-up and feedback calls?

If you could find perfect answers to these questions, then consider that you have found your perfect design partner. Increase your social media presence with amazing images, check out the guide for social media size.

Wrap up

There you have it! Everything you need to know about graphic design. On the whole, graphic design is an art that can bring out the aesthetic appeal of your brand, build trust and eventually drive more revenue for your business. Whether you are just starting off your business or a brand mogul, famous graphic design companies can save you from a lot of hassles and add value to your business. Explore the top graphic design companies in the USA.

The top graphic design firm like All Time Design helps you in finding the best design talents. Right from a solid logo design and customized illustrations to stunning motion graphics and website UI designs, we have got you covered. With a flat rate and subscription-based model, you can place your unlimited design requests and get the designs delivered at an incredibly faster turnaround time of 1- 2 business days.

Get started with your 21-day risk-free trial here to check if we are the right fit for your brand!