Top Designing Ideas to Improve Business Performance

What is the thing that first comes to your mind when you think of graphic design — Is it the website banner design, app design, brochure design, or letterhead design? Well, none of these answers. These are the only outcomes. Even online dictionaries don’t give you the exact definition.

Graphic designing is a skill for the visual interpretation of the message. It can be digital, physical, or anywhere in between. It’s an art to achieve objectives by using images, symbols or even with words. It helps to express concepts and ideas aesthetically using various graphic elements and tools.

The original form of graphic design was found in cave paintings (15,000 BC). These paintings were used to keep records, communicate stories and provide information. You can still get to see these paintings in some parts of the world. In the 1920s, William Addison Dwiggins was the first person who gave this art a modern look. Until his death, he kept contributing to the designing community and introduced great fonts like Falcon, Caravan Metro, Eldorado, etc. In 1984, with the launch of Apple’s first computer, applications like Illustrator and Photoshop were introduced to the world. These graphics applications helped designers to create incredible designs for different platforms.

Graphic designing has become an essential part of businesses today. To make potential customers understand your business, you have to convey your message in such a way that it can hit their mind. This is where graphics designing plays a pivotal role. By merging aesthetics, creative thinking, and technology, you can convey your message, which will remain imprinted in the mind of your audience.

A good design can open up a door for endless opportunities for businesses. Though its importance is often undervalued, it can contribute values to the growth of companies. In this blog, we will share the graphics design ideas that can help you in improving your business performance in 2019.

• Corporate design: Every brand has a different story to convey. The story is about their mission, values, goals, USP, etc. When we talk about corporate design, it is usually in terms of the company logo, colour, typography, etc. A logo is a graphical representation of a brand or company. A well-designed logo attracts potential clients. Along with this symbol, colours and typography used in the logo too play an important role. Both have the power to communicate the essence of business. They have a substantial impact on consumer’s behaviour and emotion; for example, Mastercard. After 20 years, the brand has recently changed its logo design. If you look into its new logo, you will notice that the stripes have been removed for a block orange colour. The bold white text has been replaced with black colour typeface—all in lower case and is positioned outside the symbol. Two primary colours (red & yellow) have been used in the logo to represent richness, prosperity, and happiness.
  
• Publication graphic design: It includes newspapers, magazines, annual reports, books, catalogues, etc. Publication design is a process of placing text and images smartly to support the visual content. A designer must be aware of the practices and traditions of the publisher he /she is going to work with. Each publication has a different purpose; therefore, different designs will work for each of them.
• Environmental graphic design: Providing signs to customers outside our office is a great way to connect with people and make them easier for them to navigate your place. The practice is prevalent in the historical period as well. You can also use Environmental graphic design to communicate your brand story by using various elements like material, colour, pattern, etc.
• Packaging graphic design: Today, the packaging is not just a wrapping sheet to protect the product. It is helping businesses in gaining attention and thus increasing sales. In this modern business world, businesses have started communicating their brand story through packaging design. Here are some few tips and tricks to design creative packaging for your product:
• Using eco-friendly and recyclable packaging
• Make it product friendly
• Intelligent packaging—using near field communication (NFC) tags or radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to engage the consumers through their smartphones.
• Design some special editions
• Make it easy to handle
• Use colours that can make a product stand out in supermarket shelves
• Be empathetic to the consumer while designing a package
• Website graphic design: Your website design acts as a digital salesperson. User-friendly website design not only attracts more customers but also increase sales. While designing a website, prioritize in the following things:
• Speed: No matter how beautiful your design is, if the design is data-heavy and is talking more than three seconds to load, you may lose potential customers.
• Broken Grid/Asymmetrical Layouts: This type of layouts can help the designer to maintain consistency and alignment easily while adding the content—headlines, images, call-to-action, etc. Such designs help visitors to point towards important parts website, thus making them engage better with your website.
• Video Backgrounds: This is a prevalent trend these days. Having videos instead of simple text or image can help you to get more attention. Interesting and catchy videos make visitors stick to your website for long, thus increases the chances of converting them to potential customers.
• Micro Animations: This is a great way to provide an intuitive experience to users. Letting visitors know if they undertaking the right actions can drive them to the conversion point.
• Advertising graphic design: Advertising design refers to the creation and arrangement of visual artwork. If you look around, you will get to see advertising everywhere—from billboards to billboards to wall paintings. Great and catchy advertising will urge the audience to know more about your brand. And who knows they may fall in love with your product. To create awesome and catchy advertisements:
• Use Visual Metaphors: Example, Elter Drugs used the metaphor ‘An unwashed vegetable can become a deadly poison’ to give a strong message about food safety and for his own Gastric and Antibacterial Therapy Division
• Find Hidden Relationships: For example, Parship.com—an online matchmaking service provider used the symbol of men and women in a zipper form to promote their service.
• Use iconic figures and ideas: Example, Samsung has used the famous figure Vincent Van Gosh to give a message ‘For self-portraits. Not selfies.’
• The show, Don’t tell: Example, Curtis tea decided to show the taste and smell of the tea with an image rather than words.
• Recognizable symbols: For example, to place your business on a map, you can design the location pin symbol in the form of, let’s say a bakery shop.
• Brochure design: Brochures are a great way to not only provide information but also driving people to businesses. When it comes to brochures, designing play an important role. There are three types of brochure designs-tri-fold, z-fold, and roll-fold. Impressive brochure design can help in winning the loyalty of customers. Here are a few designing tips for brochure design:

• Use visuals consistently throughout your brochure design
• Use contrasting colours to highlight vital information. But remember, colours used in the design should reflect your brand identity.
• Use frames to fit together all the images into the page design easily.
• Feature handwritten illustrations, fonts, and icons.
• Use essential statistics in a creative way
• Try to use images of people from your company or your community
• Direct readers with visual cues

• Label Design: Labels are the visuals that distinguish a brand from its competitors in the crowd of supermarket shelves. It generally contains information like ingredients, manufacturing and expiry date, warnings, etc. A strategically designed label can help companies in conveying a brand message and pitching sales. It assures customers about the quality of the product. Here are some tips for designing labels for products:

• Enhanced Readability
• Look out for typographic pairing
• Use illustrations
• Consider the size of the product before designing
• Emphasize white space
• Know the material type
• Use barcodes

Customize T-shirt design: These days, companies are designing custom t-shirts for marketing their business or campaign. It is a unique way to create a buzz about products or services. It is an ideal elevator pitch. Custom t-shirts carry the brand message in a friendly way. An attractive t-shirt with a company logo design or name can grab the attention of the audience and urge them to know more about a brand. Here are a few tips for designing a custom t-shirt

• Think about the objective you want to achieve with a custom t-shirt. Example, do you want it for promotion, leave-behinds or internal unity.
• Choose colours that reflect your brand image and are print-friendly
• Choose your t-shirt type
• Determine the place of design on a t-shirt
• Choose right typography
• Know your printing options

• Vehicle wrap Graphic design: It is the most cost-effective form of advertising. It is a movable billboard for which an advertiser pays only once. Whether you want to introduce your brand in the market or if already established, want to stay ahead of the competition, vehicle advertising will put your business on cutting edge of advertising. Vehicle wraps are usually made of large, printed vinyl stickers. Designing them may look more comfortable, but it can be a little challenging. Here are some few tips for designing vehicle wraps:
• Use bold colours text and visually motivating images
• Trick viewers to grab the attention
• Use textures
• Make viewers laugh by creating some funny design. This will helps you in getting word-of-mouth marketing
• Use 3D moving billboards graphics

In addition to this, try to keep the advertising copy limited and avoid using stock images.

• A good design is the core support of your business

So folks, by now, you must have understood that graphic designing is not only about creating website banners or logo. It is an art with a purpose. It required proper planning to achieve specific goals with the help of illustration, photos, symbols, etc. We are at the end of the year 2018 and the year was all about taking risks in graphic designing. To remain in the competition and gain more visibility, you needed to take it up an extra notch in 2019. I hope this guide will help you in improving your business performance in the coming year.