Why Good Design Matters To Your Business and 5 Design Hacks To Make You Look Like A Pro

Good design can make or break a business, so no pressure…

Good design sells, its proven!

During 2005, a group called The Design Council studied 63 portfolios of companies that traded on the FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) during a 10 year period. Companies that invested into design did way better than the ones that didn’t; they outperformed the FTSE 100 index by 200%. Yes, you read that right; 200%! Getting design right early on could make a huge impact on sales, consumer trust and profitability.

Create a great first impression

Just like the dating game, first impressions make a big impact. Get this right, and you’re already on the right track for creating new business. Establish the right tone of voice early on to appeal to the demographic you are trying to target. Are you reaching out to a younger audience? If so, the design obviously needs to reflect this; make it bright, playful…you get the idea. Deciding on what design is right for your brand needs to start with a clear idea of who you are trying to appeal to. Netflix uses demographic-targeted design in an insane way; my Netflix won’t necessarily look like yours and custom thumbnails tailored to your viewing habits will be shown on your Netflix homepage. Crazy I know, sneaky demographic-targeting at work.

Good design solves problems

Fear no more, death by PowerPoint can be a thing of the past. You no longer have to use bar charts, pie charts and excel sheets to share information, a designer can help you out! Dissecting information and making it more visually appealing to your audience will help then stay engaged in your content and not fall asleep during the presentation!

Strong web design > instant consumer trust

A poor interface design can immediately lose you business. Keep your clients interested, use design to your advantage and be sure to use clean, clear design to make your impact. A website will often be the first port of call for consumers. You may be right on point with your SEO, but what’s the point in ranking high on Google if people are leaving your site straight away. Let me blow your mind with some study facts… a study by Research Gate in 2014 found that, out of 15 participants, 94% of them left a website early on due to bad design, only 6% were content related. Using too much text, busy layouts & boring web designs are just a few reasons why you could fall short and have a high bounce rate.

Why bidding design jobs sites aren’t the answer

The idea of getting a personalised logo for under £20 may sound like a tempting offer, but realistically you won’t be getting something unique that’s tailored to your business. Choosing something cheap may help your bank but damage your business. If you hire a design consultancy they will spend quality time on your project and that’s what you pay for. This being said, there are some great sites out there with some great designers, but just like with everything in life be prepared to pay for the better ones. You get what you pay for, after all.

If outsourcing your design work isn’t an option for your business right now, here are a few top tips to cover you in the meantime...

1. Pick a nice font

Simple yet effective. Make sure your chosen font is easy to read, an obvious one but surprisingly so many get this wrong. Staying away from red flag fonts gets you on the road to success straight away. Out of everything, I judge a bad font straight away and will immediately hate the design. Every designer has a personal vendetta against a handful of nasty typography; my number 1 being Papyrus. In a previous job, a client used Papyrus in their logo and refused to give it the boot. And if you don’t trust my opinion (A PROFESSIONAL DESIGNER) trust Ryan Gosling (THE HOT ACTOR)...

My Top 5 Google fonts…

Lato

Arvo

Vollkorn

Abril Fatface

Ubunto

Top Tip : Google fonts and fontlibrary.org, are great free resources for fonts that can you be used for anything you fancy.

2. Colour matching

Syncing your imagery with its natural surroundings in beautiful harmony makes you look like a pro from the outset.

3. Nice imagery

Unsplash, unsplash, unsplash. It’s free and amazing, need I say anymore?!

4. Be a kerning pro

Use your visual eye to check if spacing is in check; the default setting in some programs doesn’t always give you the best results. My advice would be to p l a y a r o u n d w i t h t h e s p a c i n g.

5. Never use pure black

Pure black doesn’t exist in nature. Young designers often tend to love using black at the beginning of their careers, often looking for that dark and classy look. However, the dark grey look will make your work look a lot cleaner and professional. Also, why would you want to use black when there are an array of colours you can use?! White text has been a popular in design for a while now, in both web and ad design. While this can look great, use with caution and make sure your background isn’t too light otherwise your message will get lost.

And, if all else fails, you could just do a U-turn and make it really bad and maybe It will go “viral” like the city of Los Angeles job advert for a graphic designer...

Or even better get in touch with us and let us do the work for you!