During my previous roles as marketing coordinator and marketing manager within companies across the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and Australia, I found myself questioning the need for using a graphic designer. Are they really worth it? The answer is a resounding YES, but let me explain..
With useful online tools like Canva, my limited knowledge of Photoshop and even Paint or Powerpoint, I couldn’t see the need for a graphic designer. I could design email signatures, leaflets, Facebook posts, eNewletters; you name it. Give me a day or so and what I came up with would look pretty good (or so I thought!).
Working at Chilli, an all-inclusive digital marketing agency, however, has enlightened me to the answer to the question “why use a graphic designer?”. Now I would like to share my answer with you.
A Graphic Designer Saves Time and Money
Working at a digital agency, you become very aware of the time it takes to carry out a task – that time in agency terms equates to the dollar value of a quote. But in any and every business time is always money. Having tasks carried out by someone who is not qualified, be it in graphic design, web development, SEO, marketing strategy, and digital marketing platforms such s Facebook and Google AdWords, will result in the task not being producing effectively or efficiently. When marketing your product or services, either digitally or in print, have the desired effect on your target market is crucial for success, after all, it’s these sales that make or break your business.
An experienced graphic designer can come up with a design in a quarter of the time it will take you to do it yourself. One day spent working on designing something poorly, will very quickly add up to a week – a weeks pay spent doing something mediocre that you could have paid to be done well, is money wasted. Hiring a professional gives you time to focus on what you do best – your job.
It can end up costing two or three times as much if you try doing it yourself or use a quick online solution. Understanding how to set up work for print, using colours, saving images correctly, overprints, bleeds, RGB or CMYK, pixels, jpegs or pngs…it can become overwhelming and costly. Quality graphic design has longevity for a business and can have strong ROI for your overall brand image. Not to mention, redesigning your business’ image over and over wastes time and money and can be detrimental to your brand. As the saying goes, ‘buy cheap, you buy twice’.
We talk to people often who have taken a quick fix – or several – and this has cost them much more over a year than if they had used a professional in the first place.
Get noticed for the right reasons
Using a professional graphic designer or a branding agency will make you stand out from the crowd and get you noticed. You need your business to stand out so your branding, logo and business stationery need to be consistent, professional and with the correct messaging. They say we have three seconds or less to catch our target audience’s attention. Make sure to use every advantage and resource you can to make those three seconds count. Think distinguished not ordinary! A professional knows which colours provoke certain emotions and what is trending versus what is last year. Professionals know how to give your business a professional edge in front of your competitors; your customers will see this and favour you.
The design needs to speak to you target market in a way that is functional, attractive, and professional. Professional graphic designers know which fonts to use and where; they will keep font sizes and colours consistent and ensure the overall look and feel of all your collateral is consistently on brand. Good design should be consistent and have continuity that flows. It has to be aesthetically pleasing to the observer or it can run the risk of being passed over. A poorly designed website or piece of marketing collateral does nothing to build trust and credibility with your customers, so if the graphics are not up to scratch, you have a recipe for disaster.
Years of experience and expertise
Designers are constantly immersed in the industry and thrive on finding new and innovative ways of branding and marketing products and services. They are also experienced in evaluating the best avenues to use in order to promote your brand and gain the most awareness. At Chilli, our graphic designers work closely with our digital marketing experts to produce not only high-quality advertisements, but imagery that cuts across any specific digital platform being used to promote the business.
There are many graphic design-related questions relevant to modern business which you can only really learn the answer to through experience. Like which file types work best in certain situations? What Pantone colour should your printer use in printing? A professional Graphic Designer understands the terminology. Like rasterisation, vector, trimming, CMYK vs RGB, foil, bleed, spot UV, die-cutting, z-fold, and so on… don’t waste your time learning these when a professional will make sure you get it right first time and not through trial and error.
A graphic designer understands how the human eye works — how and where it will first rest on a printed page. A graphic designer can pinpoint the first pixels you see on the screen the moment your favourite web page loads. Graphic designers know why one photo is better than another, and that’s not just based on actual PPI vs effective PPI. Designers are aware of the emotions created by imagery and colour. They understand why blue works for a label on bottled water and why black or brown won’t. A professional graphic designer is capable of scientifically designing a concept and delivering on the promise of the brand. It only takes one bad impression or one bad experience to lose a prospect or customer forever.
Investing in professional graphic design services also shows your prospects and clients that you value your business enough to invest in it, so they should too! Think of it this way, if you don’t value yourself enough to invest in professional materials for your own business, which will help you build your bottom line, how can you expect anyone else to value your services or products enough to pay for them?
Graphic design thinking and problem solving – designers promote the idea that form follows function.
Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, is reported to have once said, “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it ‘looks,’ but of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it ‘works.’” Simply put, it means the design must work. It’s not a decoration or just for show – it must have a goal in mind.
Graphic designers offer a different perspective
As a business owner, you are very close to your business. You love it and may even be a little obsessed with it. It is therefore ill-advised for you to make big decisions about something you have little knowledge of which may impact your business significantly. Just because your competition is doing it, it doesn’t mean that you should. If you sell lovely garden furniture and your favourite animal is a snake, that doesn’t mean you should use these two things in your logo! Take a step back and leave it to a professional who will ask you the right questions and create something you love that will work for your business now and for the long term.
At Chilli, our in-house digital marketing experts, web developers, graphic designers and account service teams, sit down and brainstorm to ensure we find the best solution for your marketing. When we create a design for your business, it has been strategically thought out to deliver the message to the correct target audience and fulfil the marketing goal. Get in contact with Chilli, your local in-house digital marketing agency, today and let us help take your business to the next level.
