A company brochure may be pretty, but your designer should never think it is artwork

Years ago I was asked to make a brief presentation to a graphic design class at a college. I had been working in the industry for about five years and had hundreds of successful designs under my belt but felt there was an important point to make to future designers. That point was that your graphic design services in a corporate environment are not art. You are not an artist when being paid to design a brochure or what have you. Needless to say, the statement was received with some shock and a bit of sadness.

Many people enter the graphic design field because they are very talented artists with creative flair. I’m not going to suggest these people are not artists at all. Rather, what I’m getting at is that, when you are hired to design a marketing piece for a company, you are there to solve a business problem. Your goal is to achieve the goals of the marketing plan the company has laid out. IE: make more money and communicate the corporate message. Therefore, such a job isn’t the place for you to get crazy and treat it as an art project. Instead, your task is to become fully informed as to what this design should be communicating so that it will result in a return on the investment.

Each design you do for a company (unless they specifically ask you to create some artwork) is a sales job really. Early in my career as a designer I learned the value of sales and being able not only to communicate with salespeople but also perform the task of being a salesperson. Graphic design positions are generally marketing positions. And marketing is selling. So regardless of your aspirations of being an artist, your job as a graphic designer in marketing is to sell product or ideas through effective design. With that said, you should be involved with the sales meetings so you have a clear picture as to what the goals are for sales, marketing, earnings, target market and so on. Without that knowledge I just don’t think you can effectively prepare the right design for the job at hand. Every marketing piece is created with a specific goal in mind in terms of sales. Just making something cool looking isn’t going to cut it.

Should you be a company looking for a designer I recommend thinking of this article. Ask questions about how that individual comes up with designs for marketing collateral. Is the designer fully invested in the entire process of your marketing plan and asking questions to ensure the design will meet all expectations? And can an explanation be made as to why the design achieves these goals? Don’t settle for something that just looks nice. Dig deeper to see what the design is really saying about you.

Should you be a graphic designer starting out, please don’t let this discourage you. You are an artist if that is what you want to be. However, artwork is something you may be doing on your own time, which is what I do. When working in a corporate marketing environment, your job is to solve sales problems through effective design elements. Therefore, I recommend learning more about the sales goals and getting to know the sales staff. You are there to assist them.

Have questions or want to know more about me? Visit www.jacobnorris.com