Change Your POV: Design for Marketing Part 3

By: Sarah Rushakoff

Over the past few months, we’ve talked  a lot about getting ready to start a design to promote your  marketing project. We’ve established a rapport with the client, defined an audience, gathered our materials, and picked the tools we want to use. There are a lot of administrative steps on the front end, but now we’re ready for the fun stuff: laying out our design!

Ask yourself some questions about your target audience. Depending on what kind of project you’re promoting, those questions might include:

Where will they be when they see this piece, and what will they be doing?

Imagine yourself seeing the finished piece in the context your audience will see it.

For example, when you see a billboard next to a highway, you’re probably driving so you can’t devote a lot of attention to it. You’re pretty far away from the billboard, so you won’t be able to see very small details. You’re moving fast, too, so you’ll only see it for a couple of seconds at most.

When you see a magazine ad, you’re probably sitting at home, or maybe in a waiting room. You’re reading a magazine, so you likely have plenty of time to browse through it. And you’re less than an arm’s length away from the pages, so you’ll notice the more subtle details.

When you put yourself in your audience’s shoes, you will better understand how they’ll experience your design.

How should they travel through the design?

I like to picture the audience looking at my design as if they were taking a road trip. Now that you’ve got a mental picture of your audience’s surroundings, think about what will catch their eye. What’s the first stop on the journey?

The most prominent design element might be the name of the product or event. It might be a question, a bold graphic, or a striking photograph. You already have your materials, so go through and pick which parts will grab them.

OMG they’re looking! Time for the next stop on the road trip. Keep their attention by serving up the next most important piece of information. That could be a few fun details of your event, some features of your product, a discount offer… whatever will keep their eyes on your design.

What do I want them to do after they’ve seen this piece?

At this point, your audience has seen most of your design elements. Sprinkle in your finer details, like how to register, where to get the product—or other random bits of info that the client insisted you include!

The whole road trip was only seconds long, but you’ve piqued their interest! They’re inspired! You can help them out by including a call to action. I think a CTA can be as subtle as including a clickable link, a share button, or even a QR code (don’t @ me, I thought they died in 2012 too). More traditional CTAs are clear directives like “BUY NOW,” “Donate today,” or “Become a subscriber.”

When you’re pretty much done with the design, if you have time before your deadline, put it away for a while. Go take a walk. Have a snack. Go to sleep. Just give your brain a break from looking at it. Then when you open it up again, you’ll have a fresher POV. Look at it again through the eyes of your audience, and see if there’s anything missing or funky.

To show you what I mean, I found a cute template on Canva for a summer festival and then ruined it. Don’t say I never did anything for you!

Okay. This template has pleasing colors, a cute illustration, and a retro look. But your client gave you a truly wild amount of copy to include. Maybe they just sent you the press release and told you to “work your magic!” No one will read this wall of text. It’s all valued the same, because it’s the exact same color and size. I forgot who I heard this from, so I’ll just assume I made it up: “If everything’s bold, nothing is bold.” Plus, the color is nearly impossible to read against the background, it doesn’t say where the event will be, and you never say who you are!

Here we go. We’ve got the organization name, the title of the event, simplified details… Super importantly, we’ve got “FREE ENTRY,” answering the question I guarantee you’ll get over and over again anyway even though it’s right ding-dang there. I would post this kind of graphic on social media, accompanied by more detailed copy and maybe a contact phone number or email.

In conclusion!

I hope this little series on design for marketing has been helpful for you. Go forth and market, and let us know if you used any of these tips!