05 Apr Designing for Purpose

Say less for success

While we’re confronted by over a thousand marketing messages a day, recent studies have found that it only takes 13 milliseconds for the human eye to process an image.
That means when it comes to design and marketing your business, every element of the design needs to have a clear purpose to communicate your businesses message to potential customers.

So how much of your message is actually being absorbed?

That depends. How many elements, multiple messages, slogans, statements and different looks do you have crammed into a single space? The simpler your message and marketing is, the easier it cuts through the noise and stands out. Simply put, it’s easier for clients to take in one message at a time than it is to take in multiple messages through visual clutter. This is where designing is not just about making something beautiful, it’s about giving your branding and marketing material a clear purpose. A presumably simplistic and paired down design is not created without careful consideration to every detail.

Why do we tend to over complicate marketing material?

The biggest misconception in media is that the target market will not understand everything that the company is trying to say. To battle this, marketing material is often over explained and complicated. But, by removing the visual clutter people have to process less information and can concentrate on what’s important on the page or screen. But, conversely just stamping your logo on everything won’t cut it either. Creating a modern brand that is fluid and engaging will provoke your customers to unearth further information for themselves, and you will feel less inclined to clutter your marketing material.
This concept doesn’t just apply to printed media it works for web media as well.
Google researchers have concluded that users will decide if a website is ‘beautiful’ or not within 1/50th-1/20th of a second. They also found the visually complex and cluttered websites were consistently rated as ‘less attractive to users’. Where as the websites with a simple visual design were consistently popular.

So remember LESS IS MORE!

Good design will bring your customer and business together. People often feel that they need to recreate their entire brand and image, but it’s not always necessary to re-invent the wheel; sometimes you don’t need to be different, just better.
It’s a cluttered world. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve gone from being exposed to about 500 ads a day back in the 1970s to as many as 5,000 a day today. We challenge you to consider ‘less is more’ on your next marketing piece. Say less for success and see how your business can stand out in the crowd.