Why does good design matter in a digital age?

Good design is more than the provision of pleasant aesthetic. It should encapsulate the brand and do so unobtrusively. The secret is that design is not the star – the brand is. That is why good design is more than just good, it is effective. We live in a 24-hour world where clients and customers have access to your website, apps and marketing materials. The design, look and feel of any of these is the first thing they notice and it is this vital first impression that can either hook them in or bounce them away from your company. 

Design is a knife edge

A badly designed website is instantly noticeable. Be it the colours, the fonts, the navigation or even how up to date it is – a potential client looks at the website and, rightly or wrongly, they draw conclusions from it. Similarly, a website which has been over designed – i.e. with too many layers of flash and graphics or navigation replaced by animation – impairs the clients experience just as much. Design therefore is a knife edge – in order for it to be effective it almost needs to be invisible. Almost, but not quite. In the apex of bad design, good design and invisible is the place for effective design. Something that adds to the client’s visual experience of the site, the white paper, the case study or whatever it is they are looking at, but does not draw attention to the design itself. Getting this right is why effective designers matter today.

Design sets the tone

Your website is more than a shop front. It is your marketing brochure, your content marketing channel, your PR machine and your sales portal all rolled into one. As such it needs to reflect your brand values. For example – a city law firm is unlikely to have the quadrophenia target – a symbol of mods and anarchy – as the background to their design, whereas, a guerrilla marketing agency might. A social media company is unlikely to have a beige and white theme to their brochures, website or logo but a chartered accountant might. The design implies the value. Before someone sees you, they will see your website and all that it holds – use it to set the tone.  Again, this is why design matters – it is the first implication of tone.

Brand Congruency

There are two ways to look at this. Firstly the brand has to be congruent with outward manifestations of itself, for example, a funky new marketing agency cannot have a clunky old website or a charity for elderly people cannot be an online only enterprise. The second way to look at brand congruency is that the brand must be congruent in all channels – for example, the design of the website should match the design of the social media background and the white paper should match the sales brochure. Design is the lynch pin between all of these elements and good designers can serve as a brand champion.

Good design matters because digital – be it a website, social network, content marketing or a webinar –are all still routes to markets, i.e. they are ways to talk to your customers. Traditional design has always help cue emotions in customers. Designing for digital channels therefore has to do the same. The difference however is there is less time, less space and less margin for error for the designer to do it in. Now more than ever good effective design makes the brand.