We’ve mentioned it before, but we believe that for clients to make the most of their marketing budget, design should only be attempted by professional graphic designers. Poorly designed materials can break a marketing campaign from the start. Let’s review the top five reasons that attempting design without professional guidance is a false economy.
1. Graphic Design Isn’t Just Design – It’s Marketing!
A graphic designer creates artwork based on marketing values – appeal to a particular audience, consumer perceptions on colour, and much more. Designers are educated in design and marketing to bring these outside perceptions to your printed materials.
2. In-House Design Lacks Focus
Choices such as font style, image selection and white space, must always reinforce the underlying marketing message, always requiring an understanding of design principles that most companies simply don’t have. Instead, we often see artwork where everything possible has been included, losing the focus on the message and generally looking untidy and ill-considered.
3. Graphic Design Requires Specific Software
Indesign and Quark Xpress are the industry standards for design, used by designers and printers. Programs such as Microsoft Publisher or Google Docs aren’t compatible with modern preflighting systems, they cause problems when poorly created artwork is sent to print – in the best case, we would completely re-create your document, incurring re-design charges.
Still thinking of designing something for yourself in Publisher?
4. Your Design Won’t Be Scalable
One of the top benefits of using a graphic designer is that the design they create can be used over again in different applications, from business cards to exhibition stands. Documents that you create in-house will almost always be for a specific purpose, meaning time and money lost each time that a design has to be re-created.
5. In-House Design Is Rarely Printable
Do you know the following terms?
- CMYK
- Bleed
- Crop marks
- Embedded fonts
- 300 DPI
If you answered ‘no’ to any of these, please hire a graphic designer. It is a false economy to try and design your brochure, leaflet or even business card yourself. If you are not paying for a designer to do this for you, you will be expected to provide “print-ready” artwork. If the printed materials are coming out past the page margins, in low resolution, and in the wrong colours due to poorly prepared artwork, expect to have your artwork rejected.
Budgeting for a graphic designer should be viewed as an investment, not a cost. If you’re unsure about whether your artwork is printable or have other design queries, please give us a call. We’ll be happy to help – We can promise you will save money in the long run!