25/11/2022
How to Stop Wasting Money on Graphic Designers
Are you a graphic designer? If you don't understand the question, I'll put it in more simple terms. Can you make designs on softwares like Adobe Photoshop? Illustrator? CorelDraw? Or even Canva? If your answer is NO to all these questions, then you need to work with a graphic designer. That's not what the headline implies.
When I started my printing business last year, I needed a logo and flier, I paid a very good graphic designer some money to get it done. When I first got the designs, I was happy and ecstatic but as I began to understand what graphic design is about, I realised that, he might have done a very beautiful job but there was no map from me on how I wanted the logo and flier to represent my brand. That's why I'm writing this article, so you don't 'waste' money on graphic designers. Even if you can design, it's better to work with a professional graphic designer. But you at least need to know the basics of brand identity design.
So, how do you create your brand identity design?
1. Firstly, Define your target audience.
You can't write a letter to someone without having an idea of their address. The same applies to your brand designs. You need to think about the potential customers who will see your designs and Interprete it the way they can. There are two ways you can define your target audience. Which are:
I. Identify Demographics
Here, you're trying to analyse statistical data like age, gender, location, educational level, etc. You can find out about these by asking questions like:
- What is their gender?
- What is their age group and life status?
- What is their occupation?
- Where do they live?
- What is their income level?
These are just the start. You can go deeper depending on your product or service, you can also identify data like religion, ethnicity, education level, living situation, physical characteristics, or household. For example, if you sell cakes or edibe stuff, you might want to take knowledge of possible allergies in your area. But while Demographics are important...
II. Psycographics is what differs Bisi who's a 17 year old Yoruba Christian that believes in spending big from Tolu who's a 17 year old Yoruba Christian that believes in spending thrifty. Psycographics is the classification of people according to their attitudes and aspirations. While Demographics provide you with metric data on your customer, market psychographics dig into the thinking, lifestyle, choices, pain point, belief systems, aspirations, even things like food preferences, political views, entertainment choices and spending habits. Here are three questions that can help you define psychographics for your target market.
- What kinds of activities do they participate in?
- What are their pain points as it relates to the product or service you're selling?
- What are their values as it relates to the product or service you're selling?
2. Secondly, clarify your value proposition.
In this step, write down what your brand does and how it's different from other products or services on the market. You should emerge from this step with one or two sentences that communicates what your product/services is and why it matters to your ideal customer. Here's a simple method to build your value proposition; state that your product is:
- for (target customer)
- who are dissatisfied with (the current alternative)
- Our product is a (new product)
- That provides (key problem-solving capability)
- unlike (the product alternative)
3. Choose your brand colours
In the first two steps, we laid the foundations for the interpretation of your visual designs. Here, you have to pick a colour for your brand designs, or three colours; the first on being your primary brand colour; the second, secondary colour and thirdly, a neutral base color: preferably white or black. Your brand colour is the building block for all your visual designs, especially your logo. Your chosen colours are an instant sign.
