How to Design Effective Print Marketing
There is something powerful about being able to hold an effective print design in your hand. People now spend a lot of time on their phones and computers, being exposed to visual messages. This makes powerful design even more important. It also sets print apart, with the unique benefits of a tactile design that isn’t competing with forty other tabs the viewer has open.
It’s no secret that technology has changed advertising, and thereby design, forever. With your audience being exposed to so many images every day, it’s more important than ever to master the finer details to create something that stands out.
Print marketing and digital marketing have a lot of design considerations in common, but there are a few elements that need to be more carefully considered when you’re working with print.
1. Know Your Size
Make sure you know the exact size of what you’re designing for, not just the ratio. Designing for a business card or a banner are two very different things. You want to make sure that at the size you’re working with, everything is easy to see.
2. Quality Matters More With Print
While you always want to have sharp, vibrant images in any design, this is more important for print than it is for digital design. You need very high quality images to be effective. The standards will vary for the media you are printing. A banner will have different requirements from a business card and both will have very different standards from a newspaper advertisement. Check with your printer about image quality and color usage for your design before you begin.
3. Don’t Underestimate The Value of White Space
When designing for print, you have a specific amount of space available to you. It’s common to feel like you want to get the most value for the space, and that leads people to fit as much information as they can in to a small space. This leads to a crowded design that the viewer glimpses and then ignores. When a design is visually overwhelming, most people don’t stop to sort out what they’re seeing. Instead, they move on without ever receiving the message from what they saw.
This is the value of white space. Narrow down exactly what your message is. What are the most important things you want to communicate to people seeing your design? The value of white space is as support for your message. Consider the white space around your message as a visual relief, an arrow pointing the viewer’s eye to the important things you want them to see.
4. Use Your Words Wisely
Sometimes people mistakenly believe that quality, professional design is unimportant. We sometimes equate anything visual as window dressing; we consider it to be feeding our egos. In truth, effective design communicates messages more powerfully. This effect has been studied many times. Businesses with professional designs perform better than businesses who don’t invest in this area, because their messages are better communicated to their audiences.
When you look at your print design and consider it as a way to communicate a message, it may tempt you to approach your copywriting in as detailed a manner as possible. This is the same instinct that drives people to underestimate white space. Instead, use powerful copywriting that keeps things simple.
What is your most important message? Get that down to as few words as possible, while still making it powerful. Use that as a headline that catches the eye and place it in your design in the biggest font and in the most prominent position.
The details should still be kept as short and simple as possible. Your powerful headline should draw them in and make them curious, so they are willing to come closer and read this part. Make sure it is still easy to read in the design, which means you need to consider the type of font, size, and color choices for easy readability.
5. Use Powerful Images That Support The Story
As with the other elements of print media we’ve discussed in the other points, you want to keep things simple and always be thinking about the message you’re communicating. Do not add in images just to be decorative. Instead, consider what images will catch the eye of someone seeing this paper and what would make them curious enough to look closer. When you think of your target audience, what do they like? What visual cues will tell them this is something for them? A children’s birthday party would be best advertised with balloons. Keep it simple and if it doesn’t fit well with the rest of your design, cut it out.