Too often, consumers of design and marketing services think of themselves as buyers of goods; of an end product, such as a brochure, a billboard, or a radio spot. The services that designers and marketers provide are frequently thought of in terms of such end products. What these goods accomplish, and how they accomplish it, are often left as vague assumptions.
This is an easy trap to fall into when consumers use creative services like design and marketing. A big reason for this is that design is such a physical medium, and a designer’s role within many marketing plans is to give form to ideas. When an organization has a message to deliver, it’s easy to assume that what is needed is a product called a “brochure”, and what is needed is for someone to manufacture that product. However, what is really needed is visual communication. What is needed is a service that produces effective communication about an organization’s unique messages. Designing a brochure may well be the final outcome, but deciding what is to be communicated, and what form will best communicate it, proceeds and directs that outcome.
But fault for such ineffective communication strategy lies also with designers and marketers. It’s too easy to think of design and marketing as factories for the production of visual goods, because, quite frankly, creating is a natural process for most workers in these fields. Most designers know their tools very well, and can produce beautiful pieces almost intuitively. Conversely, it takes a concerted effort and understanding to remember that the medium is only the means; what that end product needs to accomplish is the real aim of effective communication. What must be achieved is the appropriate communication and marketing of your organization’s unique goals and messages. In the end, what needs to be delivered is not a product, but a service.
This is far more than a matter of semantics. When design is thought of as a simply a product, our energies are focused in the wrong place. We concentrate on the end of the process and make plans with that physical object or medium foremost in mind. The danger is that the difficult questions that should guide the whole process tend to get ignored or are given short shrift.
For example, a brochure can be used to accomplish many different things: it can announce a service to potential new customers, it can explain a complex service to existing customers, or it can broaden the public’s perception of what range of services is available. What it should not try to do, generally speaking, is try to accomplish all of these things at once. First, the goal of the piece needs to be firmly established, with the strategy behind it laid out and made clear to all involved parties. Only then can the piece find its place within that strategy and take its appropriate form. It’s the job of a visual communications specialist to help guide and focus that strategy to achieve the desired result—not simply to design an attractive brochure.
Imagine’s list of services, then, is not made up of things like “graphic design” or “web site design”. These are the tools we use to bring about effective solutions. The solutions themselves involve not what is produced in a physical medium, but the goals that our clients need to obtain. Such goals can take on many different forms; perhaps a new market needs to be addressed, maybe an existing client base needs to be connected with, or commerce might need to be carried out in a brand new medium. These are the services that visual marketing provides. Designer and client both need to understand that the focus of all activities should not be the physical product or medium, but rather the improvement and transformation in business that the well-designed product helps bring about.