It is a commonly known fact that social media marketers and digital marketing professionals must have basic graphic designing skills. But do you know why? Well, to start with, a major part of marketing involves visual demonstration and storytelling. So we can easily say that graphic design and marketing go hand in hand to some extent. But, why is graphic design important for digital marketers? Understanding the basics of graphic designing and marketing graphics will surely help the digital marketers get an understanding of what appeals to their target audience, and thus connect with them. It can also help them create beautiful marketing graphics for their digital platforms.
As digital marketers, they need to have knowledge of color theory, typography, graphics edits, gradient and patterns, the know-how of using white space and also using the transparency effectively in the designs. Be it designing websites or social media creatives, marketers need to have a creative mind. They need to know basic graphic design skills to get their product to sell. Hence, importance of graphic design in marketing cannot be underplayed.
Learning tools and applications of design comes handy in making edits and creating marketing materials on the fly. You don’t have to design an entire campaign, but, you can look into simple edits and creating a basic idea for any marketing or promotional project.
Graphic Design Skills For Marketers
1. Know the colour pallet
Colors that are used in fonts, backgrounds, icons, and other graphic design elements have an impact on the viewer. The color scheme has to be used diligently so that it creates a right impact on the audience. Marketers know their products well. They know every aspect of the products and its features that appeal to the customers.
When right colors are used to describe the products and services picturesquely, it gives more conversions. For instance, if you’re promoting a sports brand, you cannot use pink or its comrades. Pink signifies feminine nature and fragility. Athletic activities that are depicted by sports brand need a vibrant palette that represents fire and energy.
2. Tools for editing image and text
You could replace an object in the image just to create an impact. To present your ideas, it is impertinent to get the hang of tool in the image editing software. You don’t have to be a full-fledged graphic designer to do this. However, it is important to know the basics of image and text editing in graphic design.
This helps you represent your ideas about marketing and promotional campaign better than you can show through a powerpoint presentation. For instance, knowing how to use transparency, using the light and shadow in a mish-mash of background is important for a digital marketer.
Canva is a brilliant tool for beginners. It offers various templates, drag and drop feature, and layouts to design, and share beautiful creatives.
DesignWizard is an amazing Online Graphic Design Software that has got over 1.2 million images and 15,000 high-quality templates.
3. Fonts’ style and size
As a digital marketer, your knowledge about font style helps you formulate the best style for displaying text for any marketing material. It could be a poster, flier, brochure, press release, or any other type of promotional material, digital marketing design is a very important aspect.
The graphic design trends keep changing. Designers, as well as marketers, have to keep a tab on these things. Though they are not professional designers, they have to use their creativity to express more in fewer words and images.
The right font style and size to create the desired image for any campaign. Every font has a personality and emotion attached to it. Minimalism is one of the most popular design elements that have been trending.
Brands that sell toys have a funny font. Wedding retailers use beautifully carved cursive font to display panache and class. Every type of a business carries an emotion that connects with the customers. Fonts and their style can easily depict the emotion and the objective of any brand.
4. File formats
This one is easy. Knowing which file extension opens in what kind of application eases the job of a marketer.
All the software applications have distinct file extensions. Knowing the extension helps the marketers open the file in the relevant application for edits.
Also, compatibility of these file formats is essential in knowing how to convert them into various readable file formats. Sometimes, designers use open source software for creating templates. They could have different file extensions but could open in the widely used graphic software.
These kinds of files can be saved in the most commonly used image formats.
5. Elements that involve the look of the material
So, why is digital design so important? Gradients, white space, layouts, web colors, contrast, margins, padding, cropping, and many other design elements are essentials tools for a marketer.
Also, knowledge of lettering features like kerning, typographical elements, and other lettering and word styles are important. Developing skills to use all of these put together helps the marketing professional speed up their work and display their ideas effectively. Backgrounds are important as well.
Developing an insight into the type of background that is to be used for any ad campaign helps create better ideas. There are simple rules for creating symmetry and coherence in for any advertising campaign. Learning these design nuances helps digital marketers make their job easy.
Since every brand is going digital, it has become essential for marketers to get knowledge and develop basic skills in graphic designing. They also need to keep up with graphic design trends. Knowing the tips and tricks of designing will come really handy to create campaigns in absence of a designer. Since graphic design and marketing are so closely intertwined, learning a skill or two does no harm, right?
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