Advertising graphic design is a fine art, requiring careful attention to detail and thoughtful construction in order to achieve the goals of your marketing campaign. This is truer than ever before, as you increasingly only have a fraction of a second to make an impression on your audience.
At InnoVision, we’re deeply familiar with just how difficult threading that needle can be. Designing good ads can be a challenge, but it’s anything but an impossible one. Here are a few tips to make your advertising graphic design thumb-stopping good.
Make Your Ads Clear to Read
This might seem like a no-brainer, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth saying. Too often, we see ads that are jumbled and chaotic with too many clashing design elements. Your advertising graphic design needs to be clear, legible and easy to parse at a glance.
If you’re going to put text over an image, make sure you put a background under it so it can still be read. Be mindful of color contrast with your text, whether or not you’re using an image under it. Choosing the wrong colors can make your ad unreadable or painful to look at. Finally, don’t be afraid to take advantage of the white space. Sometimes less really can be more. Your ad should be engaging and appealing, not an all-out assault on the senses.
Minimize Extraneous Text
Good advertising graphic design shouldn’t overwhelm the viewer. Rather, it should quickly and efficiently inform the viewer of your message. Resist the urge to overfill your graphics with extraneous text and details. Only include what is necessary to get someone to do what you want them to do.
Think about what you’re offering them — what’s the benefit for them — and lead with that. If you have additional information that you think is still important for the viewer to have, consider including it outside of your design in a space that is more optimized for text. For example, if you’re designing something to post on Instagram, you can include extra information in the caption instead of the image. Keep the image itself simple, focused and concise.
Align Your Ads With Their Destinations
Your advertising graphic design isn’t just an opportunity to get more conversions. It’s also a chance for you to further grow your brand identity. Ultimately, you’re using your ad to get the viewer to navigate to a specific site or landing page. The ideal ad should give the viewer a taste of what they should expect from where it leads.
Think about the graphic design of that destination and design your ad to mesh well with it. Utilizing the same color schemes, photo styles or visual motifs can help create a cohesive experience. Anyone who clicks through the ad will know they’ve landed at the right place and you’ll be able to further solidify your visual identity.
Avoid Stock Photography
With such a wide variety of images available online for you to license at a nominal rate, stock photography can seem like a godsend for advertising graphic design. While stock photos can definitely be helpful in a pinch, we’d still advise you to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary.
The simple fact is that, by now, most people can recognize a stock photo within moments of seeing it. It can come off feeling generic and impersonal, which is never a good thing for an ad. If you want to include photos, take the time to go out and capture some high-quality images of your own. They’ll be tailored for your ad, and people will be able to tell you’ve given it a personal touch.
Include a Specific Call to Action
While it’s important that your graphic design is eye-catching and appealing, that’s not all it should be. Ultimately, the goal of your graphic design is to convince your audience to take a specific action. When honing your design, don’t forget to incorporate a clear and direct call to action. Avoid vague suggestions like “learn more” or “check it out,” and go for specific actionable items like “book now” or “shop now.” You need to be able to grab your audience’s attention and then get them to do what you want them to do.
Always Be Testing
Life would be much easier if your target audience told you directly what they wanted to see. And while you can do some market research to make some educated guesses, sometimes the best way to find out what the people want is to try a few things and see what sticks.
Like any other part of your digital marketing, you should be constantly A/B testing different graphic design approaches. Start with your base campaign, then take two different design philosophies and apply them to separate ads. Experiment with different arrangements of images, fonts, layouts, color schemes and more to see what your audience responds to best. Through your marketing tools, you’ll be able to gather hard data on which ad — and by extension, which design — performs best.
Invest in a Professional Design
With as many easy-to-use and accessible design tools as there are on the market today, hiring a professional graphic designer can seem like a budget item just waiting to be cut. While we understand how tight a marketing budget can be, we couldn’t disagree more.
Having a professional handle your advertising graphic design can make a huge difference in how an ad performs. A professional will have the experience and instincts to design ads that are effective, informative and visually striking. Think of it less as an expense and more as an investment. The cost of a professional design can be earned back many times over through the boost it provides to a campaign.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to optimize your graphic design or want to learn more about working with a professional designer, the team here at InnoVision is ready and eager to tackle the job. Together, we’ll create an ad that captures what makes your business worth noticing.
