How Can Graphic Design Help Businesses To Grow?

“Attention is your brand’s most valuable asset. In a world where people’s attention is in short supply, with so many distractions per second, your brand must be a disruptor.” - Sam Maiyaki

Graphic design plays a big role in shaping a business’s brand identity and communication with its internal and external public. From marketing to branding, digital marketing, packaging design, and web design, graphic design can help you gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.

With the changing scope of the modern business environment and the drastic shift of business operations from traditional to digital, creative design will help you build your brand’s online presence and oversee how your customers interact with your company based on how you present your products and services to them.

According to research by Crowdspring,

It takes 10 seconds for someone to form a first impression of a brand logo.

The implication of this for business owners and managers is that your brand's visual identity determines how your customers perceive and interact with your brand. Hence the quality of your brand designs should never be compromised.

Here, at All Time Designs, we have highly skilled and talented graphic designers working on various types of brand design projects for clients across the globe.

From our experience with these brands and how graphic design has contributed to their business growth and success, we have created this guide to walk you through the dynamics of graphics design and how it can help your business grow.

What do you think about when you hear the graphics design? Do you think of eye-grabbing designs on a website or social media pages, the artistic representations in publications, or perhaps, the fun and stunning graphics on posters & billboards?

However you think of this, Graphics design is a broad and diversified field/ practice that can mean a lot of things to various people in different fields.

Graphics design pervades every creative design concept, or element from logo designs, to posters, infographics, product packaging labels, business cards, website layouts & design, mobile app designs, software interfaces and so much more.

The American Institute of Graphics Arts (AIGA) defines graphics design as the “art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with the visual and textual content”.

In literal terms, graphics design otherwise known as visual communication or communication design is the use of visual elements and texts to communicate some ideas or messages. It helps businesses to convey their brand message and value proposition to their customers to build brand identity and increase sales.

Graphics is not just about its aesthetics, it is a crucial part of a business practice that can help you create and maintain a consistent look and feel across various platforms.

To create visually compelling and effective designs, graphics designers must adhere to pre-defined principles - a set of guidelines that must be followed and combined to create balance and stability for your creative designs. These principles include;

Balance is the distribution of visual weights, objects, texts, images, and space in a design. The principles of balance guide the structure and stability of your design. To create visually compelling brand designs, several design elements - text, images, or shapes - must be combined and distributed evenly and balanced to achieve the goal of the design.

Movement in design is the path viewer’s eye takes to go through a design, mostly to a certain predetermined path in the design. Graphic designers use the movement principle to direct viewers’ attention with the use of lines, edges, shapes, and colors of the design.

Proportion otherwise known as the scale is the creation of unity among various elements in a design. It shows how various parts of design relate to each other. Graphic designers can add elements in different sizes to create a focal point or highlight the importance of certain elements in a design.

Rhythm oversees how various objects or elements in the design are repeated to create a feeling of organized movement. Rhythm is the way graphics designers set the mood or tone of a design through variety.

Emphasis is the part of your design that attracts the attention of viewers. Graphic designs achieve this by making a part of the design stand out by contrasting it with other areas. The area could be differentiated by size, color, texture or shape, etc. A good example of this is using larger font size and brighter color on text or shape to create a focal point.

Contrast refers to the big difference between two opposing design elements. Graphic designers create contrast in designs through dark or light colors, small or big sizes, or traditional or modern styles to focus the attention of viewers on key elements of the design.

A Negative space otherwise known as white space is the area of design that is left empty. It is the blank space created between elements in a design to create an organized and scalable design. Graphics design leaves white spaces in the design to allow elements in the design to define boundaries and create a balance.

Hierarchy is the design principle used by graphic designers to highlight the importance of every element in a design with the use of different sizes and colors. Hierarchy relates to how objects and elements in a design are structured and arranged to help viewers easily absorb and understand the design.

Repetition is the use of the same elements over and over again to add texture and bring the design to life. Graphic designers use this to create a rhythm and shape the overall design by combining various consistent elements such as logos, colors, and fonts.

Variety is the use of various elements of design to attract the attention of viewers and create unity between all parts of your design. Variety in design can be created through colors, images, shapes, typography, and other elements in your design.

Graphics design is instrumental in helping your business move to the next level and contribute to your brand success. By effectively combining different elements to create a design for your business, you can gain the following;

Image source: Research gate

Your business involves the products or services you create and continuously improve on to boost sales while your brand is the image or identity that your business projects to the public. Your brand is the way your customers and the general public perceive your brand.

Your brand is who you are, it shows and tells your customers all about you, how you started and how you plan to solve their problems. Graphics design can help you establish your brand identity through logos, colors, messaging, typography, product packaging designs and so much more.

To achieve this, you need to create a brand personality - the human characteristics that you can attribute to your brand. Graphics design can help you create the following;

• Logo: is the face of your brand. It is the symbol that can be used to identify your brand and differentiate it from competitors.

Image: KnowInsiders

• Website: is your digital shop and point of contact. It is where your customers and other people can find you to gain access to your product or service offers.
• Brand colors are the sets of colors that can be used to differentiate your brand from others. Graphic designers use brand-specific colors to evoke the right emotions among your brand customers.

Image: Marion Marketing

• Fonts/Typography is the use of brand-specific fonts to promote your brand.

Image: ebaqdesign

Social media is one of the most effective digital marketing platforms to promote your business and connect and engage with your customers. Graphics design creates an art direction for your social media communication and marketing.

With the massive influx of start-ups offering almost the same services or products, businesses need graphics design to break the competitive scope of social media to connect with customers.

Based on existing reports, 40% of people respond to visual communication content much better. Businesses can use visually compelling flyers, social media ad designs, social media posts, product photos, etc. to stand out on social media and engage customers, which will ultimately help your business grow.

Communication is an integral part of your business success. Graphics design can help you share your brand story with your customers and get them to buy into your business solutions and objectives.

You can capture your business product or service offers or discounts and unique selling points (USP) with graphic designs like infographics, flyers, posters, billboards, and lead magnets - guides, ebooks, whitepapers, etc.

By capturing the above information in a design, you make it easy for your customers and stakeholders to easily understand the idea or information with minimal possibility of misunderstandings.

Effective use of graphics design and visual strategy can help you stand out from the crowd and help you reach out to your customers, impress them and ultimately, improve the sales of your products or services.

Image: Jeffbullas’s Blog

From content marketing to email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), display advertising, social media marketing, mobile marketing, etc., an attention-grabbing graphic design can help your business interact and connect with your target audience and effectively convey your marketing ideas and messages to boost sales.

Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to attract and engage with their potential customers. For this reason, several companies share useful information/data - annual sales reports, performance data, whitepapers, infographics, etc. - with their customers and prospects to inform them about their organization, educate them on important topics and build a relationship with them to encourage sales and customer retention.

Graphics design allows you to present and organize key data, reports, statistics, or research findings in a visually appealing and impactful manner to influence customers’ decisions.

For example, you can include business statistics in infographics or compile all your important business information and performance in an annual report to get them closer to your brand and positively impact sales.

Brand consistency refers to the way an organization maintains consistent and well-aligned communication and positioning in line with its existing value, identity, and strategy over time. In literal term, your brand consistency is how best your brand develops and share brand content that aligns with your brand identity and guidelines repeatedly.

Image: Sedramarket

Leveraging graphics design can help your brand develop consistent content across various platforms to increase brand recognition ( how many people know about your brand) and encourage a positive impression of your brand.

A general belief in marketing is that customer retention is a lot cheaper than customer acquisition. Finding new customers reportedly cost 5 times more than nurturing the existing ones.

Graphics design can help you develop a consistent marketing design that your customers can relate to and influences their future interaction with your brand. When customers get accustomed to and connected with a particular brand design, it encourages their purchase, trust, and loyalty to the brand. A sudden change in this brand design could affect their relationship with the brand.

Image: ManyPixels

For example, McDonald's has built and nurtured its customers with a consistent brand design that mostly has a red background, a yellow logo, a short copy in white, and the product in the center of the design. That’s the McDonald's people know and have trusted for years, if it suddenly changes its logo color to black and design background to blue, it would cause confusion and affect how they interact with your brand.

User experience refers to the way a product user interacts and experiences a product, system, or service. A good user experience is when user interaction with a product or service helps them achieve their goals - finding useful information, making a purchase, or improving communication.

Graphics design can help business owners build usable product designs by using various design elements to highlight important information and functionality on a website or mobile app page. Good use of colors, sizes, fonts, and negative spaces to enhance the aesthetics of the page and improve the user’s experience.

A good graphics design can help you attract attention to your brand. A visually appealing design aids effective communication of ideas and easy customer interaction with your brand.

An attractive visual can help you gain higher visibility and credibility and boost traffic to your brand. When more interact with your designs and visit your social media page or website, it increases your business opportunities, which can increase your chances of sales.

The modern business environment has become more competitive than ever. For businesses that are constantly on the edge due to the fierce competition with other companies, graphics design can provide you with a lasting solution to this problem.

We have already established that your brand identity and design sets you apart from other competitors, however, a creative and unique design can help you stay at the top of the game. A high-quality, innovative and visually appealing design differentiates your brand from your competitors and helps you connect with your customers.

By outsourcing graphics design services to us, you can be assured of the following benefits;

• Access to a team of skilled and talented designers.
• Access to a robust platform.
• One flat rate (no surprise charges)
• Our designers use the latest tools and technologies to design and deliver outstanding creative designs.
• Freedom to make unlimited requests and revisions.
• Complete ownership of your design source files.

Alltime design is one of the leading creative design service providers well known for its excellent service delivery and proficient graphic designers.

With a robust and intuitive platform, Alltime design enables you to access incredibly fast and professionally vetted creative designs to empower your marketing efforts.

We offer a wide range of creative services to clients such as booklets, brochures, presentation designs, product packaging designs, books and journals, flyers design, branding, web design, infographics, product marketing designs, custom illustrations, apps, and website UI designs, presentation designs, motion graphics, and animation, and front-end development.

Our team of professional and dedicated designers has a deep understanding of brand and marketing design solutions that will help our clients promote their products or services on social media and other digital media platforms.