A Crash Course in Good Design for Marketing Professionals

In a time when authentic connection between brand and human is necessary, design choices in marketing can make or break your relationship with a potential customer. The way you present your business is paramount, especially when users are interacting with your brand across multiple channels. 

Luxury brands need to be even more thoughtful when it comes to designing assets to drive meaningful connections while maintaining consistency. The luxury audience is more discerning than the average consumer and can be quickly turned off by incohesive branding, unsophisticated design and confusing website experiences. 

At Unframed Digital, we have a strong background in an innovative and refined design. Although we often work with established brands, applying consistent, authentic design across multiple platforms can cause even the most experienced marketing team to miss a mark – especially when some platforms are brand new to a team’s strategy. 

In this blog, we walk you through a crash course in design and creatives for various marketing efforts. 

The Basics

To start, let’s talk about some basic design principles. The tried and true methods for good design no matter the channel are:

• Keep it simple with clear concise language and strong, professional imagery. Too much text or more than one CTA can be a deterrent for users. 
• Limit the fonts and colors to keep the design clean. More than one font and too many crazy colors can often cause too much clutter and overwhelm the eye.
• Find balance in your design. The ‘rule of thirds’ is a helpful tool in making sure your design is balanced and pleasant to the eye. 

Although these principles will guide you to success, as you get more comfortable with good design, you can play with and possibly break these rules. Think of Picasso, he first had to master the human form before he could deconstruct it. 

Brand Alignment and Consistency

Cohesive branding is incredibly important in today’s day and age. Consumers now interact with your brand across more channels than ever before. And to reiterate just how influential this is, consistent branding has been shown to increase revenue up to 23%. 

Remember that branding is not just your logo, but an overall aesthetic and how you present your business. It includes the voice and tone in written content, the overall aesthetic and similar color scheme across all visuals, and cohesive messaging that aligns with your identity and core values.  

If all these aspects are cohesive across all assets and platforms, your audience will easily recognize your brand and identity, no matter where they interact with your business. Thus, effectively increasing your brand awareness, credibility and authentic connection.

Website Design with Mobile in Mind

Over half of all website traffic worldwide is generated via mobile devices. Additionally and most important, Google is now a mobile-first search engine, which means they are analyzing ranking factors on your mobile site first and foremost. This means that it’s more important than ever to design and optimize your website for mobile over anything else. The luxury audience, in particular, is also on the move, traveling more often than any other audience group and therefore heavily reliant on their mobile devices.

Optimizing your website with smaller image sizes and a responsive layout will provide the best user experience for mobile users. A well thought out navigation and website structure will also provide a purposeful pathway for your users throughout their buyer’s journey. 

Investing in good, clean design is also key here, as more than 38% of users will stop interacting with a website if the layout is unattractive. 

Banner Ad design can be incredibly challenging. After all, you need to design consistent, eye-catching creatives that clearly communicate your brand and message in a very teeny tiny space. 

First off, it is important to create multiple sizes of creatives to reach your audience across all devices. As we mentioned before, consumers are using their mobile devices more than ever, so careful thought to mobile banners is key. This includes limiting the text and making sure your messaging is large enough to be clearly and quickly read.

Banner Ad Best Practices

Next, a strong call-to-action (CTA) is needed that directly correlates with the user journey. For example, a strong CTA may be ‘Shop Now,’ but if the user is brought to a home or contact page instead of the product, a disconnect happens that may cause the user to bounce. 

You need to think carefully about the type of ad you are running, what audience you are reaching, where they are in the buyer funnel, and how to best communicate with them.

Social Media Best Practices

Social media creatives have their own unique set of challenges imposed by the platforms themselves. You are extremely limited in the amount of text the viewer can initially see when they scroll their feed, so your messaging needs to be clear and concise. But don’t be afraid to tell your story here.

Luckily, Facebook has recently done away with it’s 20% rule for text on images, allowing more space to showcase your brand aesthetic and voice. Often, Unframed Digital incorporates a logo and slogan over social media images, to add another touchpoint for viewers.

Again, keep in mind what platforms your audience is using most and gear your creatives to best fit that platform and mobile users. 

The Final Word

Design is a complex beast. It is often an afterthought for business owners, but impacts users and consumers on both the subconscious and conscious level, which makes design extremely influential. A strong brand foundation, a website designed for user experience, and purposeful, well-designed creatives are an investment that will pay off again and again. Not only will these components increase brand awareness, they will also gain trust and credibility for your business. 

As you build your brand and create collateral moving forward, you can also get really nitty gritty on the best design and creatives for your audience. At Unframed Digital, we may A/B test banners ads, social media campaigns, and landing pages to ensure complete alignment.

To learn more about how we can help align your brand across digital marketing channels, contact us today.