By Jo Coope
A dedicated, passionate graphic designer and owner of Lococo Creative Ltd
This is the start of a series of blog posts where I’ve decided to go back to basics and answer questions about graphic design and how it can help your business.
When meeting someone for the first time, I often get asked, ‘So, what do you do?’. When I tell them I’m a graphic designer and run my own design studio their initial response is usually ‘Wow, that sounds pretty cool!’. However, this initial response is usually almost immediately followed up by ‘so what is it that you design exactly?’.
Graphic design and its role in business
Whether you realise it or not graphic design is EVERYWHERE! Every aspect of our lives is touched by design in some form another but in terms of how graphic design plays its part, it really is surrounding us all the time. Every app icon on your phone, every website that you look at, every packaging item you touch, every branded piece of clothing you wear; a graphic designer will have been involved at some point. We all have our specialities, of course, brand identity design for instance is a discipline in itself! But it is everywhere you look and is a hugely diverse industry to work in.
In terms of what Lococo Creative does, we’re focussed on delivering graphic design for B2B businesses. This means making sure that at every touchpoint of your brand, the consumer is seeing a clear, distinctive and recognisable visual style. This incorporates logo design, brand identity (more on these in future blogs!), internal communications, website design, print collateral, exhibition design, etc. All of the kind of things that a business might need visually to communicate themselves and their messaging to their clients.
For us, graphic design is about delivering your brand identity consistently and creatively. Making sure that you always show up on whatever platform or media you are using with a consistent image is key to your success.
Why is it so important and how can it help my business?
Investing in a professional designer to help you with your business collateral is money well spent. According to the Design Council…
“Every £100 a design alert business spends on design increases turnover by £225.”
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“On average, design alert businesses increase their market share by 6.3% through using design.”
Design Council 2007, The Value of Design Factfinder report
We can help to manage your ongoing graphic design requirements either on an adhoc basis or through a retainer agreement. Building long standing relationships with our clients is where we see the real benefit of working together. We like to work as an extension of your business. We take time to understand your overall objectives and ethos right from the start. From there we can design effectively to communicate to your target market and deliver your brand consistently across all platforms. Developing this relationship and understanding over time means briefing us on new projects is straightforward. We get where you’re coming from and it makes the process easy and enjoyable – two key factors that are really important to us.
Building a long term relationship with a designer also helps to improve the consistency of your visual identity. Each designer has their own style and even with strict brand guidelines in place, they will get interpreted differently depending on who’s doing the designing. Working with the same designer or studio over time means that your identity will always be interpreted in the same way and will help to build your brand consistency. This is the reason why we passionately believe that building long lasting relationships with our clients is paramount to their success.
Four key skills that we believe make a great designer
Empathy
This is really key. Being empathetic is essential to being effective designers as we need to be able to put ourselves into the shoes of both you and your clients. It means getting under the skin of you and your business. It means designing with this audience in mind not being led by our own likes and dislikes. We believe empathy is one of the key skills any designer should have.
Problem solving
I often feel like designing is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, figuring out how all the pieces fit together perfectly to create one harmonious picture. I mean this both literally and figuratively. At times, working out how all the copy and images you’ve been supplied can fit on that double sided flyer can feel like doing a Rubik’s cube! But then working out the best way to pull together a brand identity to communicate most effectively a brand and its messaging can also be a chance to flex those problem solving muscles.
Communication
Being a great communicator is an essential skill for us as designers. Being able to communicate effectively with our clients means asking the right questions and even more importantly, listening! This is especially important at the beginning of a project but is something that needs to be maintained throughout, with regular contact and updates on the progress of the job.
Creativity
This goes without saying! Whether it’s the creative concepts for a new logo or how to get the best creative solution out of a set of brand guidelines, thinking creatively within time and budget restrictions is an important skill. It’s not only about coming up with a great creative solution but thinking cleverly about how to get the best out of a project while understanding the audience and commercial requirements of the job.
