The design of anything comes down to a merger of its form and function. A well-designed publication, product, vehicle, building, website, etc. has those two things in common – aesthetic form and viable function.
Many people think design refers to how a thing looks, but it also refers to how it works. While engineering design differs vastly from product packaging design which differs from website design, they have those two important aspects in common. They look good and they work well.
Since Bake More Pies designs advertising and other communications products, our discussion of design focus on publication design for digital marketing and print marketing.
What Is The Most Important Aspect of Design?
The audience for whom you design provides the single most important aspect of any design. Your job as a designer becomes giving the set of users to whom you want to sell your product what they want and need. That means if you need to reach a young adult audience, you write and design for their educational level. You use what catches their attention and keeps it. Conversely, if you target an adult audience of 50-year-olds and older, you use a vastly different approach to how your product looks and works. You write for an educated audience with a career.
In website and application design, we talk about the backbone of the product which refers to its database or its computer code, sometimes both. Also, called the back end, it requires efficiency in code design to load quickly and to succinctly manage each operation. Speed means everything when it comes to page load or application response.
The term graphical user interface (GUI) refers to the menu, navigation, and content presentation. Your GUI, pronounced gooey, makes it easy for the user to get around the site or application. Referred to as the front end of the website or application, it also contributes to the load time.
The third major component of your digital product, your content, can make or break your page load or response time. You could have the most efficient code in existence, but your content – the video, graphics, text, photos, downloads, etc. – can bog down your page load.
That matters to your design because Internet users visiting your website will only provide it three seconds to load. After those three seconds, they move on to your competition. Your design must provide quick response and efficient activity.
Your website’s or application’s navigation must also provide an intuitive way of completing each action. Even if your page or app loads quickly, if a user clicks on a link to go to your gallery, they expect it to immediately take them to the gallery. Response time matters.
Design for any marketing product also requires attractiveness, but not for the sake of being pretty. The most beautiful product, whether an ad, website or blender will not sell if it does not do its intended job. A social graphic, ad graphic or website should quickly convey the necessary information in an entertaining, memorable manner. It should also direct the user to a source for additional information. With a product such as a blender, if the device does not work to puree fruit or mix up parfaits, the purchaser returns it. Your product does not sell because it does not work properly.
The Art and Science of Design
Design requires both art and science. The art component creates the beauty that draws the consumer to your design. The science component creates its function. It also contributes knowledge of what people consider attractive and functional design.
Science provides the statistical knowledge that your website must load in three seconds or users will leave. Art provides symmetry and aesthetics. Science tells you through surveys and alpha and beta testing which layouts a user prefers or which product packaging they prefer.
The Design Process
We achieve viable results by using a systematic, comprehensive method of development. The process begins with research. In marketing, this research centers around the following:
- the consumer
- their problems
- competing products
- potential solutions
The research typically targets a single problem that the company already identified. Perhaps the entrepreneur noticed or experienced the problem, or another individual brought it to their attention. The entrepreneur believes they have a method of solving the problem through their product idea.
Consumer research uncovers how large of an audience exists for this product. It also unveils the various aspects of the problem.
Competition research delves into the products that already exist that attempt to solve this problem. Few problems exist that business has not already tried to solve, so what you create must work quicker, more quietly, and achieve results more efficiently than what products already exist. Through this research, you examine current at-market products and how they approach the solution.
Brainstorming your final solution requires developing multiple approaches, then honing the options to the one you develop into a minimum viable product (MVP). You build it. You package it. You market it. You sell it. Okay, Bake More Pies helps with the packaging and marketing, helping you with the sales. We can also help you with the developmental research so you can build your MVP.
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Our savvy with market intelligence combines our science education and our artistic talent. We conduct the research for your business so you can develop the best product design possible.
We take the same care when we develop advertising for your product, content for your website, landing pages for your products, direct mail or email campaigns, interstitial ads for mobile video, etc. We use a different type of research, but the result is the same whether we conduct competition research or market research.
The process works the same whether you need a designer for an ad graphic or a graphic design for a website or a schematic design for an engineering project:
- research
- analysis
- brainstorming
- design
- testing
- Publication
Our graphic design team approaches the design process the same way. Whether you need a social graphic for Facebook or an ad graphic for a display ad in Vogue, Bake More Pies can help you with any digital or print design. Our designers combine high-quality educations with an innate talent to produce attention-grabbing designs that convey necessary information and help the consumer move through your sales funnel.
Let Bake More Pies help you help yourself! Contact us today to learn more about how our design team can help your business market its existing products or launch its in-development products. We can assist with your entrepreneurial efforts with our research, development, and design knowledge. Call or email us for more information on how intuitive graphic design and web design can help you reach more customers and sell more products. Bake More Pies is the design partner you need.
