What if I told you that an awesome marketing design is the best investment you can make for your brand right now.
It’s true, and more brands are starting to realize its importance.
This is not a mere coincidence either.
Great design, vibrant colors, an engaging design layout, easy-to-understand fonts, and a highly interesting brand theme lead to higher brand awareness.
Brand recognition is one of the prime objectives of any business that’s starting out. The visual medium is something that can help with that, by retaining 65% of the information in people’s minds, up to 3 days after first sight.
To help you understand the value of design for digital marketing campaigns, in this article I’m going to provide a complete guide to marketing design, as well as graphic design tips for awesome marketing design, a list of design tools that can help, and some design ideas to inspire your creativity.
Let’s dive right in.
Table of Contents
What is Marketing Design? [An Overview]
Simply put, marketing design is utilizing graphics, images, and other design elements to communicate and promote a brand’s message and products/services in an engaging way.
Marketing design builds on the unique visual identity that a brand chooses for itself.
Think website and social ad themes.
Both will feature a specific color scheme, both will have similar typography, and both will share uniform imagery to keep the messaging consistent.
Coming up with all the visual elements, with the brand’s messaging and target audience in mind, is brand design creation.
Why Marketing Design is Important for Modern Businesses
Marketing design holds tremendous value when it comes to a brand’s marketing strategy.
In fact, it’s so valuable that according to one marketer survey, up to 80% of businesses will depend on visual content marketing materials for their marketing efforts by the end of 2021.
In terms of real-world value, having a visually appealing brand design pays in various forms.
These include:
- Better User Experience – marketing design addresses the key issues and pain points that your target audience has, or may have. It ensures that audiences convert quicker and with the least number of outreach efforts.
- Faster Conversions – attractive website design coupled with intriguing landing pages can enable easier and quicker conversions due to greater engagement and relatability with potential customers.
- Greater Shareability – better-designed pages, posts, infographics, and other promotional material are more shareable than bland copy and lackluster ads.
- Higher SEO Value – high-level marketing design is better for search engine optimization since it generates more visits, mentions, clicks, and backlinks.
- Stronger Communication – visual aids are better for communicating an idea and relaying information than written copy.
And that barely scratches the surface.
As mentioned earlier, marketing design is also important for cultivating brand recognition in the long-run.
Using a signature brand color scheme increases recognition by 80%. Plus, customers form an opinion about a brand within 50 miliseconds.
When you combine that with the fact that design consistency can improve revenue by 33%, it becomes even more crucial to make a decent first impression.
4 Top Tips for Awesome Marketing Design
Getting started with marketing design – especially if this is your first rodeo – can be tough and a bit intimidating.
To make sure that you stick with the best practices and create a coherent brand experience, follow the “MUST” approach – a list of 4 crucial tips that you must follow:
- Make Designs That Speak to Your Audience – design according to audience preferences and connecting better with target markets.
- Use Consistent Color Themes – unify color themes and grading across branded items to improve brand recognition even while users move to different platforms.
- Simplicity Speaks – keep your design simple and easy-to-understand, but meaningful enough to have visitors stay on them and interact with them. Furthermore, use fewer fonts to avoid a confusing and messy design that breaks design themes and puts off viewers.
- Take a Value-Driven Approach – ensure that each design element serves a purpose, i.e., provides audiences with some value, whether it’s in the form of a helpful link, or just an interesting image.
Other than that, make sure to instill as much authenticity as possible into your design.
If it’s even slightly similar to a competitor’s brand design, there won’t be any point.
5 Amazing Marketing Designs Examples to Inspire You
Out of the millions upon millions of marketing design examples, some manage to stick out for audiences and marketers.
This is due to their relevance in the modern context and just the top-notch design philosophy behind them
Here are some of the best marketing design examples from recent campaigns for your inspiration!
Feedmusic (Website Design)
Feed’s website design is a masterclass in how to create an ethereal and engaging user experience for visitors.
Using ambient and environmental design principles, the team behind Feed has created a stunning example of design inspired by real human emotion.
What’s great about this site design example is how they’ve executed a concept that is not new by any means. However, it’s an example of how to optimize existing design concepts.
Nike Training Club (Ad Design)
Nike used skeuomorphic frames for its ad, social media, and general promotional material.
Skeuomorphic frames are a technique that shows images, site layouts, or landing pages inside a mock device to demonstrate how they would look on an actual smartphone, tablet, or desktop.
While it’s a well-used design concept all over the world, Nike really captured the sporting spirit with their design.
Uber (Email Marketing Design)
Uber’s email marketing design is as simple as it gets, yet it delivers just as much value as more complicated designs, if not more.
The value proposition is given center stage (with a bigger font size) and the overall design represents the app environment itself – simple, straightforward, and brilliant.
This is also a great example of how good typography can make or break an ad. Uber’s choice of typography pops and informs at the same time.
LinkedIn (Infographic Design)
LinkedIn’s infographic for its explainer of what a well-balanced blog should look like is nothing short of a masterpiece.
The idea of using food groups to describe blog elements is super-smart, especially in the age of dieting and food-awareness.
What separates this infographic from the countless others is how it keeps the reader’s attention till the end, and leaves them wanting more, different info from the source.
Porsche (Facebook Carousel Ad Design)
Porsche’s carousel ad on Facebook is highly interactive and awe-inspiring.
This is mainly due to the chatbot that appears in the middle of the carousel to actually connect you to a customer service rep.
Plus, the overall design looks really simple, crisp, and clean – exactly what we would expect from a company like Porsche.
The 5 Best Marketing Design Tools
Your marketing design will only be as good as the tools you use to create it.
Here are some of the top marketing design tools that even non-designers can use to create stunning visuals.
Pixelied
Pixelied is a free online design platform for experts and design novices alike.
A great alternative to sites like Canva, Pixelied takes the guesswork out of design, and features awesome templates that are tailor-made for marketing design.
The platform does not require any technical skills, is free to use, and offers awesome features.
Here’s a glimpse of everything it has to offer:
- Leverage Typography – select from hundreds of native fonts (or upload your own font to the tool).
- Brandify Your Design – you can also instantly brandify your collateral (with your logo) with your own presets without using Photoshop.
- Use Illustrations – you can also add ready-to-use illustrations (avatars, backdrops, characters, etc.) to your design.
- Leverage Ready-Made Templates – there are thousands of ready-to-use templates for social media design, blog post featured images, and more.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In addition, there are icons, blends, and other top-of-the-line features that you can benefit from – all for free.
To get started, simply head over to our online editor.
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a collage-maker that lets you combine images, text, and videos for interactive and attractive storytelling.
The platform is ideal for brands that use photos in their messaging.
Completely free to use, even non-designers can use it to create short animated videos, social graphics, and web stories.
To start designing, visit Adobe Spark.
Visme
Visme is a design platform that lets you create a variety of PR and marketing content.
It has templates for marketing material such as presentations, animations, web banners, infographics, and more.
The platform has both free and priced plans.
What makes Visme great for designing is its customizable design layouts and templates. You can use them as-is, or modify them to your liking.
To start designing, visit Visme.
Final Thoughts
It’s already been proven that beautiful design is the key to successful marketing.
Similarly, great design tools such as Pixelied are the key to marketing designs that leave a lasting impression and turn audiences into lifelong followers of your brand.
Whether you’re creating beautiful background designs for websites or funny meme pictures for Facebook ads, Pixelied is your ticket to a world of gorgeous design elements.
