Design plays a very important part in different business tasks. It serves to captivate the attention of potential customers, as it embeds in their memories.
For example, successfully branding your company requires a great logo design marketed with consistency. No matter where your brand appears, the design needs to remain consistent in order for consumers to be able to recognize your brand.
On the other hand, website design has to remain consistent as well, but it should also be functional and practical for your current and future customers.
Achieving this whole task is quite challenging as hitting that sweet spot between eye-catching designs, functionality and telling the brand story in the whole process is quite complicated. Luckily, there are already those who have created successful designs, and acquiring inspiration from them is a great way to get motivated, no matter if you are the one working on a design, or you have undertaken the challenge of outsourcing to a designer.
Find out who they have worked with
There are many companies with an outstanding design which have no in-house designer. They have successfully outsourced this task to the experienced professionals. Finding out the ones they have outsourced is a great way of finding people with great portfolios consisting of various successful designs. Take your time and take a look at their portfolio.
Doing this will give you a great chance to dig deeper into the whole design story and determine the best ways to approach it. The more clients the company has, the more successful their approach is.
You can also get in touch with them to learn about some of their principles and what they are trying to achieve whenever they are creating a design. Once you are done, you will have a much clearer image of the direction you should be taking to create the perfect design.
Pay attention to their social media networks
Image Source:www.howdesign.com
Every company that is serious about attracting a high number of customers has a well-established social media presence. This is a great way to find out how your competition is employing their designs. Every social media network requires a different approach, and learning more about each one will help you determine what you should be focusing on.
You will know which types of design are used for advertising, which are best suited for sharing content and which are perfect for a captivating first impression. Also, you will be able to see that each competitor keeps their branding consistent.
Beside the positive applications of great designs, you or your designers are also going to be able to see some mistakes that the competitors are making. Having an insight into the mistakes made by the competition will allow you to make a much better design as well.
The more you research, the better your design is going to turn out, as you will understand the good and the bad practices of your competition.
Learn what their whole story is about
A beautiful design is a great way to attract customers, but there is more underneath the design which makes the customers come back to you repeatedly. A great way to understand all this is to carefully go through the design and story your competition is using to connect with their target audience. A great practice is to:
- Visit their YouTube channelThe video is a very important medium nowadays, and good companies always use it to tell their story in a creative way and make an effective marketing strategy. Visit a competitor’s YouTube channel and see how they tell their stories and how it all works together with their whole brand design.For example, the Coca-Cola Company always has their logos in videos and greatly relies on strong red colors in their videos, which is now a recognizable element in their videos. People can often assume that the advertisement is from Coca-Cola, as the red color is dominating the video.The great number of smiling people also implies that Coca-Cola brings happiness to them. This form of consistency is the most effective way of putting your brand out there.
- Visit their websiteVisit a competitor’s website and see how they have kept brand consistency in combination with overall website functionality. This is very important, as your customers will care how nice your site looks if it doesn’t offer great functionality and simple navigation. Remember that the design should also be practical.
- Take a look at their marketing campaignsTaking a look at competitors’ marketing campaigns is also important, as you will see all the unique ways of captivating an audience with different types of materials. Also, you will get to know where you can put a variety of design elements without affecting the story that is being told.
- Learn their story inside-outThe story is what matters the most. People do not get emotionally connected to a design color, functionality or beauty. They get connected to the stories which brands tell.This is something you should pay a lot of attention to, as the story actually plays the most important part of the whole branding and design strategy. However, make sure that you stand by your story because you don’t want your customers to be deceived; it will ruin your overall image, running the business into the ground.
Conclusion
We often need a dash of inspiration to get our creative juices flowing, especially when it comes to design. However, there are plenty of ways of seeing the approaches that the competition has chosen for themselves.
It will allow you to learn a lot and pick the right approach for creating a great design that will put your business out there and make it recognizable. Do your research well, especially if you are planning to grow your company internationally.
