Graphic design today is one of the key components of information communication, in other words company’s branding, which creates an attractive design and gives significance to any story. But, despite the importance of this area, people around graphic designers do not always understand their role.
Myths about graphic designers can be found all the time, but today we will talk about the 5 most common ones.
Writing texts is not graphic
designer’s task
If you are a designer, you should not move very far from
copywriters and editors: you are responsible for the final appearance of the
text on the page. Your design should complement the story written by the
copywriter, so you need to read the whole text, put it together and make it
call attention. You should make the message on the page as visually clear as
possible, which is achievable only by working in tandem with a copywriter and
with the text itself.
Be always informed
about new trends
A new direction in design can inspire and throw great ideas.
But to create all the work based solely on trends can drive you into a dead
end.
The best thing you can do is be inspired by something new,
come up with a design in your own style and add only a little bit of modern
innovations. The best design projects set trends, rather than dive into them, which
end up looking the same as all other projects on the internet.
You should always
come up with something new
Pressure is extremely high for graphic designers on today’s
market, where they are required to come up with something new and incredibly
cool every time. Each time, customers raise the bar of expectations, focusing
on the modern designs of their competitors and other projects, wanting to keep
up and maintain leadership positions in the forefront of the design trend. The
thing is that gradually updating the project, introducing new functions and
capabilities into it in accordance with new technologies is good, but if you do
this only because of the client’s desire to keep up, this won’t lead you to
anything good.
In order for you to generate results you need to forget
about inspiration and focus solely on finding new solutions that will bring the
client to a leading position. Do not forget that you are primarily a designer,
so practice new approaches to design, study new programs, try to improve a
project that is already completed. Sometimes these actions lead to the
emergence of new ideas that can be used in the next project.
Fear Comic Sans like
a plague
Some designers take their hatred of the Comic Sans font to
the extreme, severely criticizing anyone who dares to use it in their work. In
general, this font was first developed for use in the “clouds of
dialogue” of the characters in the comic book. Since then, they began to
use it uncontrollably wherever the customer asks for the “original”
font. Of course, this font with its style is not applicable everywhere,
especially in the printing industry, but sometimes it can be used. Today, many
experienced designers choose Comic Sans to convey “everyday” style in their
projects, as well as to display dialogs in illustrations. Therefore, you should
not write off the font: yes, it is very specific, but it can be used sometimes.
Graphic design is
just decoration
The profession of designer is becoming more and more common,
but there is no real understanding of what graphic designers do. Many believe
that the main task of the designer is to make beautiful things, like to take a
plain text, add pictures and decorations to it. But this is very far from the
truth. In fact, designers believe that the form should depend on the function
performed – the effective communication of the message to readers. Therefore,
their goal is to create a beautiful and functional design, which requires a
large number of skills developed over the years.
Do not forget that in each industry there are many myths that take place among specialists in this industry. Along with designers, people who have never studied design continue to support many of those myths about creative people, burdened with limitless creative abilities. Therefore, the next time you start another project, remember: the possibilities of design are endless, and all the myths that you have heard are just things that people tell without even knowing anything about any of those subjects.
What do you think? Tell us your ideas in the comment section below!
Before you start to panic, graphic designer and marketers
will not be replaced. So, if you feel yourself alleviated and this was the only
thing that you needed to know, you can skip to another article. Otherwise I
invite you to read this article as we find it very interesting and useful, so
much so, it will allow you to adjust your professional knowledge to have even
more success in the future.
So, will graphic design be automated? Will marketing be
automated? The answer is no, as we have said before. Instead, marketing and
design will be mixed in one single person with the help of AI. The advent of AI
will take on a routine.
There will be a need for a person
who knows how to work with AI and will be a carrier of knowledge about the
product.
Voice-first interfaces are becoming more popular
and may be the main working tool. Mary Meeker from the KPCB Foundation in her
annual report called the voice “the next big interface”, starting from the fact
that the usual screen devices will replace the more “transparent” ones. One of
the advantages of this scenario is that it will help people with special needs
(deafness, blindness, etc.). Already today, 20% of requests from Google App are
maid through voice.
The largest PPC platforms already know how to
generate a banner, run CPA campaigns with pay only for the result. Draw
conclusions from the results and make changes to the campaign.
In the long run, the person who will be responsible for the
product in the future, let’s call him Product Expert, will gather knowledge about
business, design and marketing. He will use AI as the main tool and data
source. AI will be connected to hundreds of different company tools. The task
of the specialist will be to deeply know the product and ask the right
questions. For example, “Which 5 channels bring us users with a low retention
rate?”, “Which ones do we spend the most money on?”, “Reinvest this budget on 3
new channels and compare the result in two months.”
In fact, there is little futurism in this. All this can be done routinely now. Mixpanel can show how users from New York pay more, but for a shorter period. In July, a voice interface appeared in Google Analytics, which you can ask for insights about your data.
It is important to understand that the skill merging
scenario will not happen overnight or in the near future. Marketers will never
wake up and hear on the radio on their way to work that they are no longer
needed. We would compare this with the skill of selling ads on the radio. Ten
years ago, a marketer or an advertising agency had to call the sales
departments at a radio station and discuss the terms of the partnership.
Advertising on the radio did not die, as did the radio itself. But thanks to
programmatic advertising, the robot itself can bargain for the price, narrowly
target the video to an audience, simultaneously include channels such as
Spotify Audio Ads, collect accurate data and even sell this data as insights to
others. Yes, many still agree on telephone advertising, but 40% of all online
advertising in the world is already launched through programming tools. As a
result, the task remained the same – to sell audio ads, but now the marketer
requires knowledge of programmatic tools, and not a thick phone book.
We believe that, first of all, you need to work in product development sphere. Due to the fact that the team is fully responsible for the success (or failure) of the product, the correct thinking is developed: the problem cannot be “thrown” on the client’s mistake. Product teams are interested in not having extra people on the staff, because the company makes money by selling the product, not people. Food companies are the first adopters of any approach to optimizing costs, especially if efficiency is growing. Take, for example, the engineering skill of a designer. If a designer knows how to typeset, he saves time on negotiations and can quickly show his vision of interaction.
We think the UI will be fully automated, and the experience
skills that both the designer and the marketer share (interviews, market
analysis, product analysis, flow and funnel) can merge into one profession.
Lately, companies started getting a need in a product guy
who brings results, not a team member who does not see beyond his narrow
responsibilities. For example, when sending email to millions of users, every
detail is important. In order to properly prioritize these details, it is
advisable to do a study, collect data about who we are sending the letter to,
at what stage this person is uses the product and what would he or she like to
learn from your company. Who should do this research: designer, product manager
or marketer? Perhaps an analyst? It does not matter. It is important that the
product guy sends millions of emails that will benefit. He can call himself
what he wants.
According to McKinsey research, AI will take on the routine
tasks in the near future. This will free up time for more detailed thinking of
product strategies and training. Such a trend can be divided into those who are
expanding their knowledge into other areas and who can take on more tasks, and
those who do not want to learn beyond their skill.
The reason why companies right now will not begin to combine
related professions to optimize costs is that AI is not yet sufficiently
developed for this. Today, tools are more like a more comfortable wrench than a
virtual team member, but that will change. The situation is reminiscent of Uber
and autopilot cars. While cars on autopilot still cannot massively carry
people, the company hires drivers. But when the technology is ready, people
will have to be fired.
Will AI replace everyone? This is not really possible, not in the next few decades. It depends on how quickly AI will enter offices massively, and as for as its ability to show information and draw conclusions, the ability to make decisions independently evolves. Harvard Business Review predicts automation of 47% of all human work until 2033.
What do you think? Will graphic design be automated? Will marketing be automated? Tell us in the comments below.
This seems to be one of the most popular topics among graphic designers. In our daily work we have so many interesting moments that if we wrote them, we could publish a book. In this case, we are talking about customers. There are many different types of clients that will make the job easier or more difficult. But no matter If you are simple readers or graphic designers, you will find the article quite interesting.
First, I will talk to readers who are not graphic designers. Some of you could have started a business lately and had to encounter the process of logo design or brand design a little bit exhausting. You had a great experience and are happy with the final result, but there are also people who had a bad experience with a designer who could not communicate well and the whole process was slow. Let me assure you that not all graphic designers are the same. You have probably met a person who did not know how to talk to people and especially to clients. It takes much more to be an independent graphic designer than a set of high technical skills. It is also necessary to have some personal qualities such as the ability to communicate, be a leader, be a teacher, understand the other person, listen and much more.
Now let’s go back to the main topic of the article. How to
deal with difficult customers? First, there are no bad or difficult clients. It
won’t be harder unless you do it yourself. It is up to you if your client is
happy with your work and the entire experience of your service. And yes, you
have read well, I said experience, because you do not sell the service, if you
want to succeed you must sell the experience.
Therefore, if you have a difficult client, think about
something you could do better. Maybe it’s the way you communicate. If your
client tells you to change things for something that you know will not work,
try to teach. Explain in simple words the problems that your client will
encounter if it is going to be as he or she said. After all, if your client
wants something changed and that is the final word, then you can accept and
send the changed project and the original work you have created. This way the
client will feel that you care about the business and will return. In addition,
you are not losing anything, because you have already created something and the
client wanted to change it. But be careful here, you have to allow two slight
modifications (such as colors, typography, etc.) and ask for the price
adjustment if you are asked to change everything and do something almost from
scratch.
These were some of the ideas on this subject. Remember,
there are no bad projects, unless you make them so. What do you think? If you
liked the article, we invite you to discuss it in the comments section below.
Please share it with your friends and we will see you in the next article.
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