10 Reasons why you Need Good Graphic Design in your Life!

Have you ever bought something that looks naf? No? Point made.

There is a large debate around the importance of good design, especially for micro companies. Depending on if you pay a designer of if you try it yourself, graphic design can be either quite costly or extremely time intensive.

Even when you do splash out on a designer, there’s no promise they will even do a good job!

So is it worth it?

YES! Here a few reasons why:

1. Trust and Credibility – You’re more likely to trust a product/service/brand with higher end graphics than poor graphics.

2. Attention – You have around three seconds (often less) to catch passers by attention and convince them to read on. Good design can achieve this, whereas poor design can turn away potential customers instantly.

3. Desire – Great designers can communicate through the pathways to consumer needs, emotions, and aspirations. You need to ‘want’ a product before you can buy it.

4. Remembrance – Will you be remembered a year from now? Will people be talking about you after your interactions? Design can help!

5. Perceived Value – If something looks good, it adds value in people’s minds, it acknowledges the fact that some actual effort has been put into it. It must be good enough to deserve some attention to its appearance. When the perceived value is higher, you can charge more for your product/service. This can make up for the design cost itself!

6. Respect and Better Clientele – Great design demands respect and attention. A higher respect of your company can attract a better clientele.

7. Effective Communication – Design aids understanding of marketing messages and you will find that with visual representations, people just ‘get it’. This instant understanding makes your job so much easier as a marketeer. It will save you lots of time, money and headaches of having to push out your sales messages over and over again to sink in.

8. Brand Consistency – Your brand identity and its value should be of upmost importance. Apple’s brand value is estimated at around £80bn ($119bn). Having a name for your yourself is so important, and design that keeps your brand consistent is a large part of that.

9. Increased influence – With the above attributes, you will be perceived as more credible and therefore people will start to look to you as a thought leader, and will follow and share your stuff.

10. Greater Customer Loyalty – Your consumers will appreciate well designed materials and become familiar and comfortable with your products/services. This can also lead to higher word of mouth referrals.

Ultimately, it increases the propensity to buy. Make it look good, and people are more likely to buy into it! So yes it is worth making an investment into professional designers. Notice we say ‘investment’, not ‘cost’. Or worth doing some research into studying the art of design itself – but more on that tomorrow.

ACTION: Look at your company from a visual perspective. Does your imagery align with your brands core values? Does your imagery effectively communicate what you’re all about, even without any wording? What do you think needs the most work done, and what is the most customer facing imagery you use? Think about what is worth spending money on and what you can do yourself. Budget into your finances to get these most important aspects nicely designed. With the intention of eventually having everything designed professionally, budget permitting.