Basics of Designs For Marketers

If you are a Marketing Manager then you have probably been taught tons about business. From EBITDA to Sales Margin to GTM - these are phrases your education (or eventually your job) has taught you about.

But, something that most marketers are pretty bad at is 'Basics of Design'. What's good design? What's bad? And why the hell should you care?

Most designed elements (whether it is an advertisement or a poster or even a bloody visiting card) says something about the business. A lot of marketing managers have a very untrained eye when it comes to qualifying what's a good visual element versus what's not.

If you are in brand marketing, you tend to be typically a little more nuanced but being design savvy is equally critical for folks in digital marketing (seen your logo cut on that insta-story, you know what I am talking about) and trade marketing (no one is going to be able to read your brand's offer on that background on your on ground creative).

This is a rough listicle of sorts, especially for anyone who's just stepped into the crazy world of brand marketing or has been roaming around here like a headless chicken for a long, long time.

Random (and hopefully relevant pointers) in no order:

Where will your creative be shown: Please for the love of god, do not resize your newspaper advertisement into a Google Display Network thumbnail for the sake of calling your campaign "integrated". Some campaigns work pretty well across different mediums seamlessly (think Spotify's Outdoor campaign on social media), most don't.

What is your creative intended to do apart from its primary function: Most times designers get a half-baked brief, or they'll get add-on instructions that'll make them miserable later. There is a reason photoshop, illustrator, lightroom and canva have different names. You can't randomly ask for multi-lingual animated GIFs for a campaign for which all creatives were designed on a software that had bunch after bunch of static creatives in English. Similarly, you might have a kickass logo that you make for your annual marathon event that looks terrible on the white cheap nylon shirts that commercial gave printing approval for. Think wisely and do not think only for immediate purposes.

The Colours say it all: If you are not napping away at your table, you would have heard pantone, CMYK or RGB. Pantone colors have a color matching system, the Pantone Matching System. This is where inks are created into distinct shades and there is a Pantone number for every colour. CMYK pertains to the four ink colors applied to color printing: C- Cyan (a light-blue hue); M- Magenta (a pinkish red); Y- Yellow and K - BlacK

RGB means Red, Green, and Blue. These shades are the primary colors you see whenever you look at photos on your computer screen or digital camera. If you are printing then this is to be changed to CMYK.

Typically what's on the PC (designed in RGB), is differrent from what's printed so designers typically use Pantone colors as a standard.Later, based on whether the project will be uploaded online or used as a printed element, they convert the Pantone shade to either CMYK or RGB.

Colours will always evoke differing emotions at a subconscious level so choose widely. A yellow creative at X'mas will always be off irrespective of how strong your brand recognition is unless it's tempered with Christmas elements.

Typography: This is the easiest because most brands have their brand fonts sorted. Just cultivate an eye for typography and how it goes with the particular element you are designing, and you should be good to go. Typography is a science by itself with a whole host of aspects and jargons but you don't really need to worry about them as a marketer.

Visual Hierarchy: Have you seen a newspaper today - there's a masthead there ("The Economic Times", followed by a "Headline" with a "sub-heading" and a "byline" followed by the body copy. That is the best example of arranging visual hierarchy. As a marketer resist the visual temptation to shout out your brand name, brand logo, offer, tagline, headline all in font size 60. Ensure your creatives follow a beautiful visual hierarchy with relevance and consistency to make an impact.

Similarly keep in mind you read from left to right, top to bottom arrange in importance accordingly. Your graphic designer won't know if it is more important to say "Summer Bonanza", "50%Off" or "Offer Valid only Today" - you have to guide the flow and arrangement of communication.

Alignment: This one we all know, thank you MS Word! Unfortunately,it's not something we all do right. Be careful of the alignment you pick and on your own presentations, please ditch justified alignment to its own private hell.

Palette: Every brand has its own colour palette. A set of colours that go well and resonate with it. However there will be problems. Inordinately bright colours for brands when they are putting out a sober message. Or Inordinately dull colours during a festive moment. Colours that look smashing online and tepid offline. Tread with caution and work with adding colours to your brand palette that works across multiple scenarios.

Opacity and Resolution: The former refers to the opposite of transparency and can be very important on your digital creatives - the latter showcases how strong your visual clarity is irrespective of being magnified or bumped up by X number of times. Avoid transparency (does not print well) & always ask for high resolution product or shoot images - there is a tendency to get greedy and ask for compressed files that are easier to email out of your corporate email box but high resolution images are way better, almost always.

Stock Images: If you are in branding, and putting out low impact creatives (random diwali post or contest giveaway) - use these licensed stock images all you want. Most high impact creatives (with significant media money) should always have professionally or atleast exclusively brand shot images. Having the same visual as your competitor might be a little awkward.

Was this post a valuable addition to help you get a little aware of designing basics?

Do share feedback and I will create more add-on content around visual design basics for marketers followed by maybe a similar series for copy and video content.