I was invited to write a guest post over at Lindsey Patten’s Blog about what makes design effective. It’s a great topic because people’s answers can vary greatly!
It’s also an appropriate topic because later this week I will be having a discussion with a client about what makes an effective outer envelope.
Design is completely subjective which makes it hard sometimes to gage its effectiveness. What one person loves, another will hate. That is the beauty of it. Some people love Van Gogh, some like Monet – but they were both brilliant painters nonetheless.
So what makes design effective? To me the short answer is: results.
Effective design will ask someone to do something and they do it. Let’s also bare in mind that design plays only a small part in the drive for results. The ‘piece’, be it a direct mail package, poster campaign, drtv ad, etc, needs to be where it’s audience might be, at a time when they might be watching or looking, appropriate and relevant to their lives, and then, hopefully the design will say something to them that matters.
This is a big subject and what is effective design for a direct mail outer envelope will be different for a web site. And through the next weeks I will try to address some of those different vehicles.
The bottom line here is that effective design is not always pretty (though hopefully it is). Effective design is about being appropriate to your audience and asking them to clearly do something – one thing. Give a donation now! Come to our event! Come out and show your support! Volunteer today!
Effective design is about reaching out to your donors or audience and connecting with them. Effective design is about moving someone to do something maybe they hadn’t considered a moment before. Effective design makes your message understood.
Will my interpretation of the effectiveness of a design be the same as yours? Of course not. But effective design, or design itself is not about one solution. There are many solutions to any design challenge. The difference is, you have hired me for my solution.
And hopefully it will show in the results.