As Infusionsoft’s senior graphic designer who puts together all the design you see from our company, I thought it was time to help share a little bit of my expertise with you. A common question entrepreneurs and small businesses ask me is if design matters for their business. Trust me, I pick my battles between copy and design on a healthy basis, but I want to elaborate on why design matters for small business.
Take a look around you right now. What do you see? Maybe a computer, product packaging, pens, pictures on the wall, logos, ads and a cell phone? All of these things have been designed. Some better designed than others, but all have had thought put into them whether simple or complex.
The first scenario that comes to my mind when thinking about design (or lack thereof) in a small business is restaurants. When I sit down to eat at a Mom-and-Pop restaurant I’m excited for the possibility of finding a diamond in the rough that provides better food and service than your typical franchise. I get a little apprehensive (more so than others as I’m a designer) when they hand me the menu that has obviously been designed in Word. I start thinking this can go one of two ways – either the food is amazing and I won’t care what the menu looks like or it will be obvious to me why they can’t afford to get the menus designed.
What does this mean? It means that design makes me form opinions and judgments before I have the means to establish a true judgment on the company. This is true of all businesses. We are all visual people even if we are not all designers. People can make false assumptions about you and your business based on your appearance and branding.
Furthermore, a well-designed piece that doesn’t convey the right message is not a well designed piece. In this case, if fewer design gets the correct message across then it is the better choice. Remember you can always test designs before you make a final choice and once you are using something, you can always improve from there.
SMALL BUSINESS DESIGN EXERCISE:
Go collect your business collateral and take an objective hard look at it again for the first time. (Ideally, take it to someone you know who doesn’t know much about your business.)
- What does it make you/them think of?
- How does it make you/them feel?
- What is the message you/they are getting?
- Are these thoughts and feelings the ones that you want to portray?
- If not, consider what you can change to improve the image of your company.
Not everyone will have the same impression, but you want to do your best to convey your message through design.
Does design matter for small businesses? The short answer is “yes.” Design does matter in small business; good design contributes to the bottom line because people need to understand how to use and interact with a brand.
In order to help your business succeed, I plan to periodically offer you design tips and ideas that will be helpful to you. If you have any topics or ideas you’d specifically like me to cover please feel free to leave a comment to let me know.
[Editor’s note: Elisa can bake a mean batch of goodies and can be found blogging her latest recipes at elisacooks.wordpress.com. -Joe]
Wow Elisa, very, VERY well written. I am glad to see you are still fighting the good fight, I am very proud of you! Keep up the good work and you will go far.
On another note, I (being a designer myself) obviously completely agree and the only thing I would add is that designers, in all industries, seem to be not taken very seriously for some reason. Small business owners usually don't want to hear from the “artist” they want to hear from the CEO so until VP's and CEO's start to echo our sentiments, I think we (the design community) are in for a long up hill battle.
Thank you Elisa! So many small businesses feel like design is something to be put on the back burner until they earn more money to justify it. While I think that design shouldn't break the bank waiting to fill the bank before creating a design seems like putting the cart before the horse. Well don, I look forward to hearing more about your design opinions in the future, keep up the good work!
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Thank you Elisa! So many small businesses feel like design is something to be put on the back burner until they earn more money to justify it. While I think that design shouldn't break the bank waiting to fill the bank before creating a design seems like putting the cart before the horse. Well don, I look forward to hearing more about your design opinions in the future, keep up the good work!
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Small business
1. Often we forget the little guy, the SMB, in our discussions of the comings and goings of the Internet marketing industry. Sure there are times like this when a report surfaces talking about their issues and concerns but, for the most part, we like to talk about big brands and how they do the Internet marketing thing well or not so well.
2. The Center for Media Research has released a study by Vertical Response that shows just where many of these ‘Main Street’ players are going with their online dollars. The big winners: e-mail and social media. With only 3.8% of small business folks NOT planning on using e-mail marketing and with social media carrying the perception of being free (which they so rudely discover it is far from free) this should make some in the banner and search crowd a little wary…….
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com