Graphic design is an artform that uses visual elements to convey ideas.
Through a combination of imagery, typography, color and other crucial resources, graphic designers tell the story of the brand they’re working with.
These stories come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The sign hanging over your favorite coffee shop’s window started life on a graphic artist’s computer. The logo on your shoes, and the packaging they came in are examples of graphic design too. The best designers know how to condense thoughts and feelings into something as small as a single image.
As your business develops, you’ll need to work with a graphic designer to ensure that all the chapters of your brand’s narrative work together. Here are just some of the different types of graphic design that will contribute to your brand identity.
1. Visual Identity
Visual identity or brand graphic design covers the main components of your company’s image. Your brand identity is a culmination of all the things that makes your business special. It might include your unique tone of voice, the photos you use on your site, and your logo.
Visual identity design focuses on the visual parts of your brand, such as:
- Your modern logo or wordmark
- Your brand color palette
- Typography and font choices
Graphic designers that specialize in visual identity can help companies create style guides. Those guides help organizations to keep their image consistent.
2. Marketing Content
32% of marketers today say that visuals are the most important form of content for their company. Human beings respond to visuals faster than text.
We can share complicated information in a picture, and because the brain tunes into images, your customers remember your pictures for longer too.
Graphic designers that create marketing images often work with business owners and marketing professionals to enhance advertising strategies. For instance, these kinds of designers might design a billboard for your offline promotion, or a Facebook carousel ad for social media.
Marketing-based graphic design can also include the creation of infographics, visual case studies, and pictures for your blog posts. Some graphic designers in the advertising world also work on things like Facebook sidebar ads or traditional pop-ups too.
3. User Interface Design
There’s more to your brand identity than having the right logo.
Today’s customers judge companies by the experiences that they provide. An attractive user interface that’s engaging and easy to use can boost your chances of sales.
User interface graphic designers work on things like the navigation menus and search bars that guide people around your website. They can also be particularly useful for companies that create their own smartphone apps for customers.
UI designers work on making customers feel as comfortable as possible when interacting with a business online. These professionals may also work with UX (user experience) designers.
4. Web Design
Web design is the next step up from UI design for some professionals.
Rather than focusing exclusively on the interactions a customer has with your business through apps or websites, these designers use your brand guideline details to create your entire website.
Using a combination of user interface and user experience strategies, web designers build a unique space where you can showcase your brand identity on the web.
The right professional can help with everything from organizing the posts on your blog, to making sure that your product listings stand out. Web designers also make sure that your customers can access your website wherever they are. That means creating responsive websites for any device.
5. Packaging Design
Packaging is crucial to a company’s visual identity.
The right packaging means that your product will stand out when placed next to a competitor on a store shelf. It also ensures that your customers have a better, more memorable experience with your brand. Great packaging helps your business to stand out.
Packing designers know how to walk the line between complying with industry regulations and earning customer attention. Whether you need help making a bottle for your new beverage brand, or boxes for the products you ship around the world, a packaging designer can help.
6. Motion Graphic Design
Motion graphic design is the process of creating images in motion.
This could include graphic design that goes into an app or smartphone game. It also involves the development of ifs, videos, animations, and other effects for your brand identity.
Motion graphic design used to be an artform reserved for the television and film industry. However, now we see more examples of this design practice on the web. You might hire a motion graphic designer to create a background video for your website, or an animated how-to video.
Motion graphic designers can also help with presentations for shareholders, or advertisements that use video and movement to convey ideas.
7. Environmental Graphic Design
This style of design speaks for itself. Environmental graphic designers create the brand identity images that appear in the offline environment.
You’d go to an environmental designer for help creating signs for your store, and wayfinding tools to guide people around your shop. Environmental designers can create beautiful murals that make your real estate look incredible. They can also help with office branding and color schemes.
Environmental graphic design focuses heavily on the offline world, and how people feel when they’re interacting with a company in person.
8. Art and Illustration
Finally, art and illustration are unique components of the graphic design world. Although graphic designers use art in virtually all segments of this industry, people with a specialty in this area concentrate more on artwork for beauty, instead of function.
Illustration and art designers tell stories with their work. They might create the pictures that go on the front of a novel, or the images in a computer game.
Some art and illustration designers can help with graphic patterns for textiles or t-shirt designs. There are also experts out there who use photography to create stock images for a brand’s visual identity.
Finding the Right Design for the Job
Graphic design is a constantly growing field with new niches appearing every day.
If you want to unlock the power of visuals for your brand, it’s important to ensure that you’re using a graphic designer with the right skills and background.
