If you’ve been around me for any length of time, you’ll have heard me tell you graphic design is not pretty pictures and it’s about communications and sales. Today, I’d like to dive deeper into that a little bit and chat about why it’s a communications and sales tool.
Graphic design is a type of communication called visual communication. What does that mean you might wonder? Well, let’s start with a bit of communications theory. Communication is made up of three parts: the sender or the talker, the message, and the receiver or the listener. Let’s use an e-mail about a new product as an example. Person A writes an email to Person B and tells them about a new product their company has just released. Here are the 3 parts of communication: the Sender (Person A), the message (all about that new product), and a receiver (Person B).
In visual communications like graphic design, the same thing happens but uses pictures and words to get the job done. let’s replace that email from earlier with a flyer. Using pictures, a company (the sender/talker) shares info on a new product (the message) with potential customers (the receiver/listener).
The goal of any design piece is to get the message across whether that’s a flyer about a new product or an invite to a party. The best way for this to happen is to use pictures and such to catch attention. That’s where the sales piece comes in. Yes, even wedding or birthday invites uses this.
In sales, the goal is to quickly catch attention, get a specific someone to read the message, and then do a specific something about it. That “specific something” might buy a service or product, get an estimate, visit a website, or RSVP to an event. Graphic design happens to be really good at this.
A successful design (and therefore graphic designer) knows how to do those three main sales pieces- catch attention, get the person to read the message, and then do a stated something as a next move and it can do these three things quickly. It does this using pictures, drawings, and words. When this happens you’ve just completed a sales communication and, if, for business, you’ve gotten your customer to hop into your sales process. This is graphic designs job. It’s main job! This process is how it grows your business, fills up the guestlist for your event, sells your books, and more.
Now granted this is a really basic overview of how it works because I don’t want to overwhelm anyone. There’s more to it and more moving pieces in this process, but I want you to see how it works and what makes graphic design so special and such a powerful tool especially in business!
By the way, if you loved this tip and you want tips customized to your business, Grab your FREE 30 minute 1:1 Getting to Know You Strategy Session. Each session is full of tips tailored for your business to help you now. I do a very limited number of these sessions each month and these can only be scheduled through email, so if you want one, email me today! Let’s chat about how branding and design can get your business where you want it to be! Talk to you soon!