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When looking at your business budget, it is a widespread thought to put the graphic design down as a fancy extra and something you can either do yourself or get an inexperienced student to come in and do for you for cheap. This is not the case and what you probably don’t realise is that good graphic design is so ingrained in our culture and daily lives that you take it for granted and undermine how important it is and the effect it has. The graphic design in your business is the first impression that your company gives to people and if it doesn’t look good, if it doesn’t look professional and if it doesn’t stand out then your business will be overlooked.
When you hire professional graphic designers, you will find that the work they do is so much more than just your logo looks like. Graphic design takes planning; it looks at the heart of your business and your goals and underpins the vision and values of a company. Whether you have an outside agency to come in, or you have an in-house design team, whatever it is they are working on, there will be a process which will involve asking questions, researching, defining the message and the goals to make sure that whatever they’re designing translates into the right message for the consumers.
The first impression and the way people see your company starts with excellent graphic design, it begins with the logo and the brand image and it needs to speak to your target audience, it needs to be functional, attractive, and professional as well as providing an instant connection to the products and services that you offer.
Your brand image expands to more than just your logo and first impression, too; it needs to be able to work on your stationery, company web pages, uniforms, publications, and anything else. Your brand image unites you and your team; it gives you all an identity and helps to strengthen the team and the commitment to the brand.
After strengthening your company internally, your brand image will then go on to make the first impression to any clients, vendors, and other entities and show the professionalism of your company. A logo only has a fraction of a second to make a first impression so you need to make sure that any design you have doesn’t look cheap and doesn’t make your company look unprofessional, cheap and like your company can’t afford a professional design.
Not investing in your graphic design for your company can mean that you also risk impractical design for your customers. For example, you could end up with a website which has unfriendly colours to the eye and complicated fonts which will give your clients and employees a headache.
If you go for a cheap, lousy design, you might end up spending even more on sorting it out to get a good design than you would have in the first place. It will also be a cost to your business if customers are put off.
