3 crucial ingredients in developing killer marketing campaign graphics

In the image-saturated digital age, there’s a lot of words being shouted, whispered and animated, all at once. Your images really need to stand out.

The fundamentals for a strong message and/or campaign that will help you make you stand out are below. They’re not complicated. But they are crucial.

And remember: The competition for eyes is immense; yet winning eyeballs isn’t the challenge – keeping them is.

1. The Medium Is Your Message

Successful communication is all about sharing information effectively. Simply pushing out a message is not enough.

The mission of campaign graphics is multi-layered. Ultimately, they must establish a connection and pull a viewer into taking further action. Working within a defined space, campaign graphics must relate to the audience, identify a point of pain, as well as offer a friction-free path to a solution.

Campaign graphics need to quickly engage the viewer. They should keep text to a minimum, and work without every detail being explicitly spelled out. They must strike the right tone without unnecessary fluff. Say what needs to be said and don’t be too cryptic. Image choice, color, and composition must work in coordination to communicate your message.

Also, bear in mind that each medium requires a different messaging strategy. For example, What you choose to use on Facebook doesn’t necessarily work on Instagram or Pinterest. Some media are image heavy, others give you more room for copy.

Also, image areas consume limited space, so graphics must remain concise, relay the main idea, and spark engagement with an eye on efficiency. Web graphics may be the entry point of engagement, but they work in coordination with other elements, so they alone don’t carry the entire burden of communicating your offer. Allow all aspects to complement each other and support the entire messaging effort.

2. Trust Your Design Team

Every designer is full of anecdotes about how everyone else likes to believe they too are a designer. This isn’t to say you should leave all design choices to trained design professionals.
On the contrary, there can and should be a welcoming place for collaboration within the design process.

Likewise, there are numerous stories of primadonna, sensitive designers. However, part of a designer’s role is to filter project input, and accommodate suggestions. It’s a balance.

But one thing is crucial: You must work in coordination with the design team. You need to be able to communicate your goal and allow them to execute a vision. The better you work with them, the better the final product will be.

The conversation should be about the intended goals of the effort and honing the message. Tell them what you want the work to do, describe the tone. Do not say exactly how the work should be done. Every marketing project will benefit when the players involved can step back and see through the eyes of another. Consider the audience, and the user experience detached from our inherent personal biases. This is the valuable feedback loop that serves to strengthen your project.

Remember, your designers are problem solvers. In design studios and creative spaces, much time and effort are spent coming up with campaign graphics that succeed, and yet appear simple and effortless. Allow creatives the latitude to use their specialties to be an ally in your success.

3. Getting Technical

Beyond the ‘vision thing’, a good designer will ensure your files meet all necessary specifications. Too often designers receive files from clients that are inappropriate for use—poor resolution, formatted incorrectly, wrong file type, etc. So, beyond demonstrating aesthetic design choices, these people know how to actually build your campaign.

The previous decade has brought huge advances in the capabilities of digital media, allowing marketers ever more latitude to bring ideas to life.

For example, using video to bring ideas to market is the newest way to expand beyond previous constraints. What’s better than trying to jam a multi-layered message into a single frame? Multiple frames, of course. Motion graphics can explain, they can tell stories, they can guide and teach, they can visualize data to help recognize patterns.

Finding your recipe for successful campaign graphics relies upon working effectively together with your design team. Be sure to have the right players in the right roles. Keep your messaging concise, and communicate your goals clearly. Trust in the design process and allow it space (and time) to improve your campaign.