As the digital marketing space continues to evolve, the level of visuals that are being posted and uploaded—whether it be for ads, marketing campaigns, graphics for blogs— has to match the level of demand the internet has been serving the business community online.
Your brand needs to be visible and needs to leave a mark on your target audience. Great graphic designing in marketing is, at most, a necessity in our times—and valuable to your business.
According to one data, up to 94% of first impressions on website navigations are design-related. That’s how big of a factor your design and visuals are in terms of marketing your brand or product online.
But first, let’s define Graphic Design.
What is Graphic Design?
Graphic Design is a process of visual communication that meshes visuals, ideas, words, and technology to communicate a message or relay information to a target audience. It encompasses color, color themes, typography, scaling, size, and more to truly bring out the aesthetic of the message being communicated.
The graphics and visuals being produced out of this process encapsulate the message that the creator wants to convey—it may invoke certain kinds of emotions or moods to align with the expression of the design at hand.
But Why Is It Important in Marketing?
1. Convey Your Branding Theme
How can your target market recognize your brand if you don’t even have a logo to show? Or at most, a consistent color scheme that can easily be attributed to your brand or product? A standout graphic design concept for your brand is pretty much necessary if you want your brand to be visible and easily recognized by people.
It’s not about having a flashy design, but it’s building a theme with a solid design concept that can strongly describe or define what your brand is all about. If you are truly serious and intentional about this, you need to get a professional graphic designer to help you establish a good branding theme.
2. Positive Brand Recall
When you have consistently delivered design outputs for your brand or products, have incorporated design elements that are recognizable among your other outputs (in all the digital platforms your brand is on) and are receiving a lot of good feedback or an increase in site visits is produced, then you have achieved positive brand recall.
When your logo design or your marketing ad reaches your target market, they need to easily remember your brand. Having dynamic graphics and visuals for your brand and all your marketing campaigns should be on your priority list. The design you have incorporated in all your marketing campaigns (from social media ads to graphic banners to daily newsfeed postings) plays a big part in an overall brand recall.
3. Contributes to the Conversion Rate
Your brand needs to be visible out there—especially that the competition is undeniable in the great digital space. When you have successfully communicated your message via your brand or product through your marketing campaigns, there will be an increase in conversion rate.
It all begins with a curious click from your target audience and leaving an impression will influence their buying journey eventually.
4. Aesthetics
According to research, we only recall 10% of the message we hear if there’s no image to back it up. The power of imagery and graphics must not be downplayed. Especially in the digital marketing scene where it’s outright important to keep your branding visuals as dynamic, and as solid as your brand message.
Yes, your visuals need to look good, and it needs to catch your target market’s attention. Having a positive brand image, alongside a dynamic design are great ingredients to bring about a positive brand recall.
To help you further in your graphic design journey for your brand, and to somehow make things more efficient for you, here are ways to automate your graphic design workflow:
7 Ways to Automate Your Graphic Design
1. Automating Logos
First off, your logo equates to the face of your brand or the main product you’re carrying. It is the first thing that your audience or potential client can remember about you. It’s more than just a graphic, it conveys and carries the message of your brand and can easily make a first good impression if it’s well-designed.
And yes, you can automate your logos. While we do recommend getting a professional to create a logo for your brand, it can get pretty expensive. If you are just starting the business, there are tons of tools in graphic designing that can support you in this leg of the journey.
For logos, we recommend the Online Logo Maker. You can get started by creating a smart logo design for your brand for free. It boasts on how easy and user-friendly it is to use their Logo Maker. You can create your logo within 10 minutes—given of course you already have ideas in mind. Their Logo Maker features an uncomplicated interface, large font selection, tons of logo templates to choose from, and you can save and edit your work as you go.
You can start for free and opt to go premium if you want to access a higher resolution when you download your logos.
2. Automating Banner Ads
There’s so much talk about automating your digital ads and content—yes, to a certain extent, and a certain level of human input. Automations don’t exist to replace human ideas and intellect. They are simply means to support and to make the workflow more efficient for everyone.
Automating your digital ads can allow the designers to create campaigns in volumes, and make things ad network ready. By removing the tedious task of HTML coding, designers can automatically create fonts, optimize images, and scale smarter.
Likewise, some tools can support these, such as Pixelixe. Pixelixe is such a dynamic tool for all your graphic banner needs, ads creation boosting your eCommerce marketing campaigns. Alongside its banner generation feature, it has White Label Editor wherein you can embed a graphic and image editor in your website; it also features new API for developers: Image Generation API, Image Processing API, and Photo Filter API.
Now you can auto-generate images with just a click with their API and integrations. You can also utilize Pixelixe to edit, host and deliver visuals, especially graphic banners, on the cloud over an easy-to-navigate interface across any browser available.
You can start your 10-day trial with Pixelixe depending on the plan you choose. It starts at $9/ month and ranges up to $249/month.
3. Automating Background Removal
What used to be a tedious job for graphic designers can now be easily done by almost anyone. Background removal tools have been on the rise and they have evolved into more reliable tools for digital marketers to utilize and optimize for businesses and brands alike.
Based on artificial intelligence, you can select the areas you want to be removed or even have more dynamic options based on your graphic needs. Removal.Ai does the work for this.
This is a powerful tool that optimizes advanced computer algorithms to detect the foreground pixel and can help you separate the background as seamlessly as possible.
You can remove your background images for free using the AI that this tool utilizes. Now you can achieve transparent backgrounds and convert your visuals into works of art, attractive graphic banners, and more. With Removal.Ai, you can simply replace the background you choose with solid background colors or any visuals you like.
They also offer Manual Image Background Removal Services if you want a more hands-on and detailed output is done by professionals. You can sign up with a free account giving you access to 50 free previews via API and apps, and build your way up with their subscriptions as you wish.
4. Automating Icons
Whether you’re using your PC, iPad or mobile phone, when you’re utilizing applications, icons are the first thing you see and are the main thing you click for every app access. It’s one of the most recognizable design elements for every visual output that a brand delivers. But not all the time you should be using it—unless it is necessary for your brand theme or a useful part of your digital product line.
Icons can be effective when they are being used to the upscale visual interest. And of course, icons can be automated.
We found this tool – IcoMoon to be a treasure trove of icons that you can utilize for any form of project you may have for your business or brand. It has a dynamic icon library that you can access for free. You can also design your icon, create TTF fonts, edit icon positions and even import your vectors. Exporting these icons is no problem as you can utilize them for any site. This tool is great for both small and large projects that you have.
5. Automating 2D Painting Creation
Technology is not here to replace the artist, but rather to aid the artist to make the tedious tasks easier. You can automate now what used to consume your time the most.
Yes, artificial intelligence now can create art—and I don’t think it poses a threat to the artists. As many of them have learned to ride the wave of this aesthetic evolution. They have learned to adapt and have optimized the use of tools to aid them in their processes.
Krita is one tool that allows you to create digital art, your way- and for free. It features a customizable layout, over 30 dockers for your additional functionality needs, and it has dark and light color themes. They have over 100 brushes that come preloaded, brush stabilizers, and built-in vector tools to help you create panels.
You can also create your 2D animation with Krita. It allows you to bring your illustrations to life by layering your animations, which you can also export with ease.
They have added productivity features that you’ll surely enjoy: Drawing Assistants, Layer Management, Full Color Management, OpenGL Enhanced, and more.
6. Automatic Color Scheme Generator
To solidify your branding needs and to establish a more consistent look for your brand, you need to have your color scheme in place. If you have ideas in mind and want to explore them on your own, you can also utilize available tools to help you nail your color scheme for your brand. And yes, once you’ve chosen your brand colors or whatever you need the color scheme first, you can generate it easily. One great tool to assist you with this is Coolors.
With loads of color palettes to choose from, you can generate your color scheme with Colors. They have features like a color picker, where you can use color info like combinations, conversions and blindness simulation, as well as shades, tints, tones, hues, temperature. You can create your gradient as well, make a gradient palette and explore other available gradients. There’s also a contrast checker to make sure you get the exact color you want. It’s an app available on mobile, Adobe add-on and Chrome extension.
7. Automatic Design Review and Feedback Process
The workflow can seem endless (and already tedious), and undeniably time-consuming at times. With the right tool, you can now automate your design review, feedback and comparison processes. With cloud-based systems available, you and your team can make collaboration more efficient and as seamless as possible. Communication is valuable and you need to partner it with quality processes that can elevate your workflow while still catching the details. Visibility on the overall workflows and collaborations on dashboards are now necessary.
Filestage.io is one of the best tools out there for automating design review processes.
With Filestage, you and your team can review, share, approve your files in one platform and reap a more productive output. You can add your comments and notes on the files being shared, you can also organize your files and versions accordingly to make collaborations efficient; and most importantly, your progress can be tracked. Quality control without sacrificing the orientation of details and the contribution of the team- Filestage.io does this best, supporting you consistently with clarity and creative collaboration.
Takeaway
As a digital marketer or a business owner, you’d want to seize any opportunity allowing you to promote your brand or business. Having a solid branding theme and visuals that keep your target market coming back helps boost that branding awareness. Keep improving your marketing campaigns by taking note of these design elements and processes that you can automate. To lessen error, and to help you improve your workflow efficiency, all the digital help must be incorporated.
In choosing the tool for your needs, choose what you believe you can adjust easily and provide you with an increase in productivity. Yes, it’s easier said than done—so the need to invest and explore is necessary. These tools simply help you build a solid foundation for conveying the message and ideas that your brand is wanting to relay to your target market. Get the work in, keep your team in seamless collaboration and deliver quality, dynamic visuals that leave a good lasting impression.
Author’s Bio:
Shelly is a content marketer and SEO who loves books, travelling, technology, watching movies, and food. She is the co-founder of SaaSLaunchr, a SaaS marketing agency that focuses on guest posting services an
