I’m looking at you, serious business person.

Do you believe that graphic design is just fluff wrapped in cleverness?  Maybe you believe you’d get as much business from writing your phone number on a paper napkin and handing it out at a Miley Cyrus concert as you would from redesigning your website.

Of course pretty isn’t enough.  But strategic design supports your business objectives.  Here’s how:

1. Strategic design reflects your professionalism.

If you’re suffering from a six year old website that you built yourself in FrontPage, or you’re using a free WordPress theme that doesn’t quite line up right, you are not making a good first impression.

This kind of goes without saying, doesn’t it?  If you look small time, people will think you’re small time.  If you don’t pay attention to the details when you present yourself, how will prospects know you’ll pay attention to the details when you’re working with them?

You wouldn’t show up at an important presentation wearing a hand-me-down tie your dad bought in 1972. Don’t let outdated or bad design be a challenge you have to overcome.

2. Strategic design supports your brand.

Your brand is everything that distinguishes you from your competition, including that pesky bit of jargon, “look and feel.”

Design is an important opportunity to communicate your brand on a subconscious level.  If you sell chainsaws to lumberjacks, but your color scheme and photos and the shapes on your site all scream “butterflies and kittens,” that’s not going to resonate with your target audience (unless they happen to be in a Monty Python skit).

More subtly, if your company is supposed to be on the cutting edge of its field, and your website doesn’t embrace a modern web aesthetic, your visitors will be puzzled.

And you say: “Please, Ann.  Nobody’s going to notice that I don’t have a modern web whazzihoozit!”

You’re right.  They won’t notice.  But something will feel off.  You won’t quite seem trustworthy.  You won’t seem to know what you’re talking about.

Not the look you’re going for.

3. Strategic design helps to communicate your message.

When your design is appealing, your message has a better chance of getting through. Text content that’s wrapped in an engaging design is more likely to get read, or at least snacked on.

Think about it.  Last time you picked up a prescription, did you get a brochure that was all teeny-tiny black print on white paper with no margins?  Did you read that thing?  Of course not.

Compare that to the brochure you picked up at the car dealership: all shiny with pretty pictures of your dream car.  You probably keep that thing on your bed-side table.

That’s the pretty part.  Taking it a step further, strategic design also helps get your content read in the right order:

• If you have multiple audiences, you can use strategic design to sort them to the right message quickly.  Group A gets attracted to this, while Group B gets attracted to that.
• If you have a complex message, you can take people through step by step, but only if the design supports that action.  In other words, you need to get people to need to click in the right place.  That’s what strategic design does for you.

So how do you know?

You’re not a designer. So how do you evaluate a designer?

Start with style.  Find a few designers you like. But don’t stop there.

Look for strategic thinking.  Ask your potential designers to explain the choices they made.  Every design element should have a purpose.

If a designer can articulate why she did what she did, she’s more likely to be able to translate your strategic objectives into a design that works.

This entry was posted on January 18, 2011 at 7:42 am and is filed under Graphic Design, Marketing, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.