Importance of Graphic Design in Advertisement

The nature of advertising easily correlates with graphic design. To build instant connections in our content-heavy social networking environment, businesses are using the power of visual elements and storytelling. Graphic design is all about the careful interplay of visual elements and type design to engage and educate their users. Producing innovative ad campaign narratives that align with the business goals to captivate potential customers.

Viewers tend to recall well-designed advertisements that make a powerful first impression. What guarantees a powerful first impression? Graphic designers make use of eye-catching type design, and a strong visual background, and employ colour psychology to capture the curiosity of the viewer. Drawing the attention of the user to the message in the advertisement. Guiding the flow of the eye movement from heading to subheading to the imagery or symbol and a call-to-action element.

Interconnectedness of advertisement and graphic design

Advertisements need graphic design to thrive and build a marketing edge. Graphic design helps to build a visual representation of a brand’s product and services. It is a medium to build visual storytelling in ads. Viewers engage with captivating imagery or design that connects with them building a strong recall value.

In the realm of advertisement, graphic design is not simply a tool, but a form of communication between the business and its target audience. Helping to make advertising more effective and engaging. Building ads that persuade prospective customers to take a desired action. In our increasingly competitive environment, businesses are investing in innovating their graphic design capabilities and team structures.

The purpose of graphic design in advertising

Graphic designers work with the main objective of bringing out a narrative. To help a brand not only use advertisements to sell products but also to build brand image. A brand story, a product line, or a message. The growing social media platforms have become large advertisement platforms for brands to advertise and grow.

Graphic designers build powerful visual communication that empowers advertisements to entice their audience. Building credible connections with the viewers. Expressing ideas through visual elements like signs, symbols, images, type design, colours schemes, and more. Making connections between the brand, people, social causes, global happenings, and likes. The purpose is to communicate the message in an appealing manner that connects with connects to the pulse of the audience.

Understanding the importance of graphic design in advertising

The selective interplay of words with visuals in graphic design quickly brings the right message to the viewer’s mind. A large piece of information can be relayed easily using graphic design. A designer works to bring out the important context of the large information into a visual storytelling narrative. This helps the brands to bring viewers to their product or service/ website. Let’s understand the essence of graphic design in advertising:

a. Building brand guidelines and consistency

Graphic design is the tool that develops a comprehensive brand guidelines kit. This kit is essentially a mix of dos and don’ts from a design perspective. The design team makes a strategic document with logo usage, colours, textures, icons, or symbols to be used, typeface styles, variations allowed, and likes. It defines the essential components of the brand’s design properties like logo, symbols, tagline, and font style. It offers them in vector, PNG, JPEG, and PDF formats for ease of access and use. A clear definition of their use and variations allows for the brand to maintain a consistent visual style that effectively reinforces a brand identity. Making a lasting impression on the target audience.

b. Adding life to a message

Graphic design essentially is the backbone to bring life to ad messages. A large textual information may get lost in a reader’s mind, however, a strong visual aid with type design enhances the recall value. It helps to bring an emotional connection with the users. A well-designed ad has a stronger persuasion power than a thousand words would have.

Let’s take the example of Amul’s iconic ad campaigns using their Amul Girl Mascot. The brand is known to bring out topical information, global news, and festive celebrations with powerful messaging. The design of these ad campaigns follows a consistent design language bringing a direct user recall to the Amul brand. It has become a striking case study globally on how to use the power of graphic design in visual storytelling. Bringing the story to life where users can connect the message of the Amul to a recent global happening.

c. Design leading to conversion

E-commerce and social commerce are two areas that are fostered by ad campaigns. Graphic design plays a crucial role in developing successful ad campaigns that drive conversions. A good ad design would capture user attention, increase ad engagement rate, and lead to conversion. A skilled designer would work with brand guidelines and build an innovative ad campaign. One that interacts, immerses, and engages the audience. Many brands are building customized brand ads today that target a user’s specific need to drive sales.

For instance: The global giant, Apple recently launched a campaign that reflects its privacy commitment to its loyal user base. The ad campaign is a series of visuals and short videos that reflect Apple’s take to educate and build awareness of its efforts on data privacy. The campaign smartly and effectively hides a person’s face behind the Apple phone with a powerful tagline – Privacy. That’s Apple.

d. Bringing meaning to data

Graphic design is an essential communication tool for data interpretation. If an ad campaign is based on data coming from pie charts, historical graphs, etc., graphic design helps to narrate the essential parts of it. It engages the users with infographics that help to bring a natural flow to complex information. It brings ease in navigation for a reader’s eye to make sense of the data.

Global brands like Forbes and The New York Times often use infographics, pie-charts, and informational tools in graphic design to bring ease in comprehensive for extensive data. This data can be political voting analysis, circulation number for their digital publications, etc.

e. Effective visual communication

Social media marketing, content marketing, and email marketing are just a few examples of where brands build extensive ad campaigns. Utilizing graphic design to promote their products and services.

With the rise in multiple networking platforms, the user’s attention span is limited to 5-10 seconds. To grab the user’s attention, innovative use of images, typography, with other design elements is required. Graphic design in this regard helps with:

i. building an effective communication that is crisp, clear, and with precise information to engage users and lead towards a call to action. Like view more, buy now, and alike.
ii. de-cluttering the ad campaign visual to stand out from the competitive advertising landscape.

When done right, powerful visual communication engages users in a few seconds to build an emotional connection sparking a memory. For instance: The Indian brand Paper Boat, utilizes the power of visual storytelling in its graphic design to build an instant connection with the users. The brand uses graphic design elements like colour schemes, icons, Indian figurines and minions, Indian landscape design, etc. to bring out the authenticity of the brand connected to Indian roots.

How impactful can Graphic design be?

Graphic design has the primary goal of building strong brand recognition in advertising. The design builds a brand’s visual identity in the market and makes it easily recognizable.

a. Air India’s red colour scheme with the Maharaja icon are two fine examples of graphic design elements building brand identity and recognition.
b. Coca-Cola and Google are two global brand examples that have consistent use of their brand colours and typography across all advertising platforms. Building a cohesive brand image that consumers identify with.
c. Brands like Apple are known to build aggressive, minimalist, simple, and clean ad campaigns. Identifying with its global brand image, differentiating it, and building with easy brand recognition.

It’s the elements of graphic design that shape viewers’ experience. In ad campaigns, these become essential for easy recognition and recall. In the advertising world, graphic design is orchestrating untold stories and breathing life into static mundane messages. Making graphic designers an essential component of building and maintaining a strong visual identity of brands.

Want to design visual communication ad campaigns for brands?

Join the Visual Design and Brand Identity programme offered by Strate School of Design. It comes with industry integration like industry live projects and group learning with peers. Powered with a French pedagogy, the global design programme at Strate has up to 20% international faculty learning. The global immersion continues with a 14-day educational trip to Strate, Paris, and semester exchange programmes.