The Point of Graphic Design

In its purest form, graphic design is the art of persuasion using words and images. For marketing your service or products, graphic design becomes your consummate visual communicator. Well done, your visual communications have the potential of speaking to audiences both vast and diverse. By targeting your message towards audiences who would be well served by what you have to offer and speaking directly to those potential customers in meaningful and entertaining ways you will reap the rewards and discover for yourself the great value of graphic design.

It takes only a few seconds, three in fact, for people to feel a sense of connection to a design. The trick is to turn those three seconds you have to capture your audience into something much more. Therefore, it is critical that the creative elements chosen to broadcast your message show your business and its objectives in the best possible light.

Strategizing is key. Focus on your goals and the people you are serving. When business objectives gel with aesthetics the message becomes highly effective; it allows people to know who you are in an instant. In the words of Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, business magnate, investor, and philanthropist, “In the same way that I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them, I also make up my mind about whether a business proposal excites me within about thirty seconds of looking at it. I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics.”

The Four Objectives of Graphic Design

I. GET NOTICED — Three seconds is all you have. Make sure it’s good.

II. BE INTERESTING — Make your message innovative, engaging and quite clearly remarkable. Why encourage eyelids to droop when you can make them open?

III. TELL THE TRUTH — Your mother was right. Tell the truth and you’ll get what you deserve which in this case translates as business. Yours and nobody else’s.

IV. BECOME WELL KNOWN — Well, that’s the point.