5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Invest in Professional Graphic Design
Did you know that graphic design is more than just a cool logo or beautiful graphics?
Just as writers use words to communicate with people, graphic designers use visual design language to communicate with people. Fonts, colors, shapes, patterns, photography, and visual elements such as icons are all elements of visual design language.
How visual design helped me in a foreign country.
Recently, I took a short trip to Valencia, Spain. I had never been there before, and I was a little nervous because I only knew two words in Spanish: gracias and hola. I wasn’t sure how I’d get around a city without knowing the language, but thank God for the signs! When I arrived at Madrid airport, I found my way to the exit thanks to the signs with great visual designs to guide me.
As the world becomes increasingly globalized, graphic design has become a powerful tool to break through the clutter.
This is an important tool for small businesses.
80% of small businesses acknowledge that graphic design is very important.
In today’s post, I will explain why professional graphic design is a worthwhile investment for your business, and I’ll include the results of recent studies on business investment in graphic design.
1. Professional graphic design builds trust with your clients
Many people associate graphic design with the creation of a logo, but it is so much more than that. Graphic design, when done well, can convey all the qualities of your brand—your personality, core values, and tone—to your ideal clients. Design that is thoughtful and professional in appearance will be seen as more trustworthy by your audience than one that lacks unity and coherence.
Your graphic design work should reflect your brand’s personality.
When it’s done consistently, your brand’s position will become solidified in your client’s minds, resulting in easier recall of your brand. Also, when your brand’s personality comes through on all of your marketing materials, you’ll attract more clients who share your values. Clients who feel aligned with your brand will become some of your strongest supporters.
2. Professional graphic design increases your brand recognition
The visual elements used in your graphic design—including colors, logos, shapes, and images—all serve to convey your brand identity. When people see your brand’s visual elements used consistently across various platforms, it reinforces your brand and increases both awareness and recall.
40% of people respond better to visual info rather than text-only info.
It’s the visual elements that tend to stay in people’s minds. If someone were to show you a swoosh, you would likely recognize it as Nike’s logo. And most of you would probably know that the Starbucks logo is green. With all the images and information that we are exposed to each day, why is it so easy to remember these logos? It’s because we see them all the time, and every time we see the logos, they look the same.
Graphic design uses these different visual elements to evoke emotions in our ideal clients. When we can achieve an emotional connection with clients, our logo becomes easy to recall.
3. Professional graphic design increases your website conversions
The design of your website is critical for conversions. If you’re finding that people are visiting your site, but are leaving without clicking on any of your calls to action, it may be because your design is not connecting with them.
94% of first impressions are design-related, and 65% of people can remember visual content three days after seeing it.
Think about your experience when you visit a new website. If you find it difficult to navigate, cluttered, or outdated, you will most likely leave the site without clicking on anything. On the other hand, if the site has a clean, easy-to-understand layout and it’s kept up to date, they will trust you.
High-quality graphic design shows you care about your client’s experience; you’ve invested the time and money to create a site that is both clear and professional. Ultimately, people are looking for solutions to their problems, and with a well-designed website, you’ve made it easy for them to find those solutions. When this is done regularly, clients will remain loyal to your brand.
4. Professional graphic design makes it easier for your clients to understand your services
One of the top reasons businesses use graphic design is for easier communication with clients.
55% of businesses use graphic design to communicate better with clients
For example, when I work on a brand identity design, I start with simplifying the strategy first. I have conversations with my clients to gain an understanding of their business and their story; this is a very important part of the process before I create any visuals. Design is a communication tool, it’s not just to make graphics pretty.
People do not buy products or use services that they don’t understand. They need to make sure that the product or service will solve their problem or at least benefit them. Professional graphic design uses visuals such as infographics, colors, and imagery to help your clients understand your services.
5. Professional graphic design helps differentiate your brand from your competitors
Professional graphic design will help your brand stand out by highlighting your unique qualities. No two companies are the same; each company should have a unique brand identity to reflect its one-of-a-kind personality. The visual elements chosen for your brand identity should convey to your prospective clients who you are and how you are different from your competition. Graphic design will help by allowing you to visually connect with your ideal audience, ultimately leading to more conversions for your business.
How much are businesses spending on graphic design annually?
Now that you have a better idea of how professional graphic design can help your business grow, you may be wondering…
How much do other businesses spend on graphic design work?
Knowing how much other small businesses allocate to graphic design in their marketing budgets, can help you gauge whether you are spending too much or too little and adjust accordingly.
The following statistics are from Piktochart.
• 17% spend less than $1,000.
• 32% spend between $1,000 and $5,000.
• 32% spend between $5,000 and $10,000.
• 19% spend more than $10,000.
Graphic design budgets can vary widely in the business community. Some companies may spend less than $1,000 annually for graphic design work, while others may spend $10,000 or more. The following is a breakdown of how much money businesses in the survey allocated for graphic design projects annually:
In the results, we can see that an overwhelming majority (83%) spend over $1,000 annually on graphic design, with the majority (64%) spending between $1,000 and $10,000. Which industry spends the most on graphic design? Software companies were among the highest spenders on graphic design (frequently in the $10,000 and up range).
Conclusion
Small businesses increasingly recognize the need for quality graphic design work for their brand identity. Strong visual content helps to explain your products and services to clients, generate more traffic to your website and social media pages, and build brand awareness. It’s important to remember that to create effective visual content, you need to create a brand identity that can be used consistently across all platforms.
Research has shown that brands that present themselves consistently, can increase their revenue by up to 23%.
Using a brand identity consistently is an important and cost-effective way for a business to build brand awareness.
Frequently with branding, people tend to think that only large corporations have the budgets to create memorable visuals—like Apple, Coca-Cola, or Nike—but small businesses can reap significant benefits for their brands as well by investing a little time and money into their graphic design projects.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Do you have a brand identity featuring your visual elements? If not, we can help. We create high-quality, memorable brand identities using simple design solutions to help you stand out from the competition.
Reference:
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/graphic-design-stats
https://piktochart.com/blog/graphic-design-business-statistics/