The Pillars of Good Digital Marketing Design
Many people think that the content of your marketing campaigns is the only thing that matters in trying to captivate your audience. This, however, could not be further from the truth. A key part of gripping your audience’s attention is using good design practices in your emails, social media posts, and your website. Without good design, you won’t be able to communicate your brand’s image effectively, and might turn off your audience if your designs don’t look professional and polished.
So, what are the foundations of good digital marketing design? Read on to find out the most important ones you can start employing today. If you get to grips with these concepts, you will be on a fantastic leg-up on making designs that stand out against the crowd.
Colour
In design colour can be a tricky thing, as there are a literal million of options to pick from. When coming up with a colour palette for your brand and your marketing, try to think about what things different colours evoke, and especially in what context. Lets say your brand is a bakery. Pinks, browns, and other pastel colours are likely to make your audience think of cakes and sweets. Bold and flashy reds, blues, and greens might not be the best choice here. This is not an exact science, so take plenty of time experimenting with what colours you think will suit your brand best, and give you one of the most important foundations of good marketing design.
If you need some help with colour palettes, or just want some inspiration, many tools exist to help you such as Adobe Color and Coolors. It’s actually a better idea to use less colours in your colour palette, as fewer colours are more likely to stick in your audience’s mind.
Shape
Shape can be deceptively simple. The key use of a shape is to break up information and content in your digital marketing design. Shape is also critical in making call to actions (CTAs) stand out, as they can immediately draw the eye towards them and might be the only thing your audience properly notices.
Balance
A tricker concept, and one that sometimes gets overlooked, is the concept of balance. This, quite simply, is how balanced all the elements of your design are. People have a natural attraction to things that are symmetrical, so symmetry is something you should keep in mind for digital marketing design. On an email for example, stacking all your content on one side will make your email seem strange, turning your audience off whatever you are trying to sell in your campaign. Unless you are breaking rules for a specific design purpose, symmetrical and well-balanced designs will be appealing and make it more likely for your audience to pay attention to your digital marketing designs.
Put it into Practice
Above all, the most important thing to remember with digital marketing design is experience. Whilst you can read and drill the concepts of digital marketing design as much as you want, none of these will be useful to you unless you stick your hand in and get designing yourself. With experience, you’ll know what works for you and your design style, as well as what aspects of design you have the most fun and success playing with specifically.
Want to know even more about digital marketing design, and seeing them applied in practice? Head over to our portfolio page to see work we’ve done here at Blue Whale Media.