Effective Design

You might spend less, but still a significant amount to make sure the money spent was a good deal and the design was effective enough.

So here we share with you some best practices on how to develop and design a surly successful print design.

Some more argument to support the printed matterials:

Most people (80%) read or scan their direct mail, according to a USPS 2006 study. Cata­logs and direct mail generate the second and third highest response rates, respectively, after telemarketing, according to a DMA2007 Response Rate Report, but personalized color print may have them all beat.

Print prompts purchases. In a 2007 USPS study, online consumers who received a printed catalog from a retailer were twice as likely to buy online from that retailer as consumers who didn’t receive the catalog.

Integrated media outperform and generate better results than any one medium alone. According to a 2007 Ipsos US survey, 67% of the online population is driven by offline messages to perform online searches for more information on a company, service or prod­uct. Thirty-nine percent of those respondents then make a purchase.

For in-depth analysis, financial profes­sionals and senior executives prefer print. Among senior executives, 59% trust printed magazines, journals and newspapers over online sources for information, and 60% turn to print when they want in-depth analysis, according to a 2007 survey by Doremus and the Financial Times.

Before grabbing the keyboard stop for a second and think it over. Design must support the goal of the ad. You have to know what is the unique selling proposition of the product, who is the target audience and where, and in what context the ad will appear. Is it part of a campaign, or a single ad?

It does make a difference: designing to a younger audience you’d prefer to design something trendy and vivid, and if you know the primer aim you’d want to design it to be the focal point of the ad.

Copy

Certainly you would prefer to keep is short, but knowing your audience can make a difference: when designing for a highly technical audience, one has greater flexibility to use more text. This kind of audience tends to prefer more details. However, you should still use bullet points and bold lettering to highlight your core message.

Commonly known that the headline takes 80% of the reading and that design and brand recognition takes the first precious seconds. So highlight the headline and use the visual to support it!

Few seconds, airy design

You only have 2-7 seconds to grab attention. So the print design should be clear and easy to take in. The first thing you need to consider is white space: it should take up 25% of the whole. Make sure your headline, imagery and copy all tie in and flow well together.

Readers first notice the visual, than the branding, than the headline and details only follow afterwards.

Contact info

Use at least 2 different types of contact information on your ad besides the name and logo. I’d suggest it to be the web url and your phone number.

Repeat!

Your prospect needs to meet your ad at least 5 to 7 times, before considering any actions to take. Assuming you have chosen an appropriate publication, you should run your ad multiple times. And in the same size and style so that it can be recognized easily: all of your ads should fit the corporate identity.

What does a user want?

· They don’t want to think or search. They want easy navigation, clear content, easy-to-understand design

· You only have 2-5 seconds to grab attention. You can’t afford to waste time on intros for example..

· Design is a supporting function: making content easier to read, more interesting, highlighting the focus point etc. Users look for high quality content and design should help them find it.

· Users don’t look for the optimum solution; they want the first good-enough solution. Give them a button to click on! And make it visible. (3 buttons are the optimum)

· Visitors want to have control and do like the old ways: they don’t want to think about complex navigation bars etc.

· According to the 7±2 principle people can remember 5 to 9 things at a time. Which means that your menu or headlines should not be longer than that.

· As we said visitors are „lazy”, they want results fast: they want to get the information they want within maximum of 2 or 3 clicks.

But a website is much more than just an online brochure. It is a tool, hopefully a powerful lead generator:

· Lead the visitor to the next step in the sales process: give them a hint of your expertise, the greatness of your product. Give them a reason to call you for more information.

· Get the users’ contact information: offer something of value on your site in exchange for their contact information. Offer product demo, white papers, webinars, newsletters, mp3, researches, any useful information

· Provide the visitor with an experience, impress them, be personal, interesting, informative, give them a reason to came back regularly.

Use design to navigate the prospect through these steps. Use eye-catching registration forms, hot-links, icons, colourful buttons and hot links, bullet points..

Effective websites

http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/business/graphic_design

In marketing materials content is the most important element. So it should be readable. Designers often ignore this. Simply because they don’t read the text.

They love to write inverse or on a picture, but it is really hard to read. Takes more effort to read.

Do you use fonts in italic? It is supposed to be more flashy, but actually it is much harder to read and comprehend.

Writing in ink or bright colors, is also a bad idea: tires the eyes.

Do you align your text centralized? Well doesn’t it take more effort to read? And you are not the only one taking his time reading it…

Can you read this typeface (Verdana, 10 pt)? The average person over 40 won’t have an easy time with it. Yet it’s still one of the most popular font and size online.

Offline use fonts with sheriff. It leads the eyes.

DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS. TAKES TOO MUCH EFFORT TO READ.

Use maximum 3 typefaces in 3 point sizes.

The optimal is 18 words or 50-80 characters per line of text.

FuNNy leTTering is Hard to read as weLL

1. Part of the whole picture

Anything you are about to design has to fit into your corporate ID. One contact (ad, DM, brochure…) is hardly noticeable by itself. You need at least 5 contacts to get near to selling, so you’d better make the recognition easier with the same design ID as well.

This ID contains the logo, the colors, the fonts, and other design elements as well.

2. Keep it simple

7 seconds is very little, and looking at a marketing material first you usually take it in as a whole, than scan and read only afterwards (following the Z shape, from left to right and online the F shape).

So the design should be simple, clear, easy to scan, and airy: at least 25% of the material should be empty.

3. Make it readable

You must follow some rules to help people read the content:

• Don’t use reverse lettering, such as white lettering on a black background

• Don’t write on pictures

• Don’t use ink colors: bright red on a white background

• Don’t center

• Don’t use all caps

• Do put a picture beside the lead

• Do use bullet points

• Do use huge headline, and sub-headline

Headlines set in serif font (Times New Roman, Bookman…) have a 92% comprehension rate and lead the eye.

Headlines in sans serif type (Arial) all caps cause a 59% drop in comprehension rate.

4. Use repetition

Repeat elements of the design: use the same type of the bullet points, paragraph and table structure, titling, etc. It helps to keep the design integrated.

You may even navigate with design: different menus or product-groups in a brochure can be distinguished by different colors as well.

5. Align

Aligning makes the design tidier and easier to follow. Align elements as if you could link them with an invisible ruler. For example the headline should side with the logo at the bottom, and the bullet points with the table.

6. Focus

You can play with the size and shape of the elements within longer materials – usually in multiple-paged brochures. Equal size means equal importance. If you decide to use different shapes and sizes than do it manifestly, use contrasted shapes, make it interesting.

Use vertical design elements: 80% of readers will look at a vertical shape or graphic before they’ll look at a horizontal one.

7. Rank

Not only can the content be ranked according to importance. The design should support the ranking as well (from the most significant to the least):

1. Headline (80% of the readers only read the headline)

2. Call to action

3. Lead +picture

4. Bullet points

5. Text

8. Style

All designs should have a stylish quality to them. Basically this is the “I like it” factor. If you want to word your wishes to the designer answer these questions:

• Do you prefer square or round shapes?

• Do you prefer one big or many smaller pictures?

• Do you like bright colors or darker ones?

• Do you like conservative, minimal, retro or what style?

Knowing these rules you can easily distinguish a good design from a bad one and can brief your designer better, expecting better results.

9. Similarity

Elements will be grouped perceptually if they are similar to each other. And when we perceive a collection of objects, we will see objects close to each other as forming a group.

10. The Law of figure-ground

In perceiving a visual field, the figures take a prominent role while other elements recede into the background.

So in the upcoming posts we will share our marketers and designers experience about design that works.