Author: Jennifer Davis

1. Boosts brand awareness and name recognition

2. Saves time and money in the long run

3. Builds your brand’s visual identity

4. Boosts employee morale, pride and productivity

5. Makes you stand out from the competition

6. Reinforces professionalism

7. Improves the readability, structuring and presentation of heavy content

8. Builds trust and credibility

9. Has the power of persuasion

10. Tells your story

If you are a new business owner, I welcome you to the world of graphic design! Graphic design is more than just a pretty face; it effectively communicates with your audience and persuades them to take action. It’s quite the superhero!

We come across graphic design everyday through billboards, flyers, brochures, social media ads, packaging, websites and signage. Visual communication is an important and heavily-relied-upon component in marketing your business. Let’s explore 10 ways graphic design can benefit your small business.

1. Boosts brand awareness and name recognition

2. Saves time and money in the long run

3. Builds your brand’s visual identity

A brand’s visual identity consists of colors, fonts, logos, graphic elements and styled photographs. Why does your brand need a visual identity? Your audience needs to be able to recognize your brand and see consistency. This translates into a memorable and trusted brand in the eyes of your audience.

4. Boosts employee morale, pride and productivity

Believe it or not, graphic design can boost employee morale, pride and productivity by creating a trusted and professional brand. Employees are more likely to invest themselves in something they can get behind and believe in, and the same goes for your customers. If your employees believe in your business, then customers will too.

5. Makes you stand out from the competition

A company with memorable and attractive graphic design will stand out from competitors with dull or poorly executed graphics.

Graphic designers are trained to research your competitors’ visual presence to see what is already out there. If your biggest competitor has a dull, bland color scheme, your graphic designer will opt for bright and eye-catching colors to make you stand out. If your entire industry utilizes blue logos due to color psychology, the designer may opt for a different tone, tint or shade, or another color altogether that can stand out and still align with that psychology.

Author Stephen Bradley states, “Human beings have an attractiveness bias; we perceive beautiful things as being better, regardless of whether they actually are better. All else being equal, we prefer beautiful things, and we believe beautiful things function better. As in nature, function can follow form.”

6. Reinforces professionalism

Investing in professional graphic design sends a message that you are a business to be taken seriously. Would you make a serious purchase from a business that had chaotic, pixelated or sloppy advertising? Probably not. Design Hill states, “A logo design that looks aesthetically great speaks volumes about its company’s ways of doing business. A strategically designed logo gives the impression that the company runs its daily affairs of business in a professional manner. That counts a lot for ensuring the growth of a business.”

7. Improves the readability, structuring and presentation of heavy content

Design Pickle explains, “If you’ve ever learned another language with Rosetta Stone, you’ve experienced the phenomenon of using visuals to deepen understanding and recollection. This language-learning software never offers explicit definitions to foreign words, but instead forces the student to infer the answer using visual context clues. The secret to success, according to the Rosetta Stone website, is discovering patterns instead of memorizing rules: “Rather than allowing you to rely on repetition and parroting, our sequence leads you to arrive at the right answers intuitively.”

8. Builds trust and credibility

Newly established small businesses need to build trust and credibility with their customer base. This often translates to the coveted and desired phase of ‘brand loyalty’. A strategic, aesthetically pleasing and well-done logo can fill customers with buyer’s confidence.

9. Has the power of persuasion

An advantage of professionally done graphic design is the power of persuasion. For example, making a split-second decision about which product to buy at the store comes down, a lot of time, to how the product is packaged. That packaging can convey an important message or speak to the consumer in a way that helps them decide to make a purchase.

As said by Canva, “A famous call to action was the Uncle Sam “We Want You” poster, I’m sure you know the one. This poster was legendary as it provided a distinct mission and invitation to readers to step forward as a soldier and take action. A simple print poster, a 2D construct, convinced people to risk their lives for their country.”

10. Tells your story

Graphic design tells the story behind your brand more effectively. Color scheme and font style choices convey emotion or feeling, setting the stage for your message. Your story matters. Consumers care about the ‘why’ behind the products and services they choose to buy and frequently, those stories are the determining factor. Creating strong brand guidelines will ensure that while the message might differ from design to design, the brand story will be consistent.

This video from Ritual is a great example of how to tell a brand’s story in a visually appealing and persuasive way.

Have I convinced you that graphic design will benefit your small business?

Article taken from Business 2 Community website, but originally appeared on Three Girls Media.