The Importance of Design
by John Eberhard

Recently a client came to me who had had some market research surveys done on his market area. His promo was hardly pulling anything. I looked over the surveys and the promo. The surveys seemed well done, but the promo itself had failed because it was very poorly designed. The client had designed the promo himself and, being an expert in his field, not in promo design, he didn't have enough of a feel for how to arrange the items on the page in order to interest the reader and get across the message.

We can see other examples of poor design in various promo that we see every day, including promo pieces or ads that take you a while just to figure out what the company is or what they are offering (sometimes you can't figure this out at all!). Or, have you ever noticed a billboard along the freeway, that you look at while you're driving by, and you can't figure out what they're saying, or what that is a picture of, by the time you pass it?

These are all failures in design. And in today's world, with the overload of sales-oriented communication being leveled at the consumer, you can't afford a design failure. Because your ad or promo piece is going to slide into the background, ignored, not seen or read, and all the hard-won cash you spent on it being wasted.

The point is that design is an important part of creating effective promo, and an important part of marketing as a whole. And that point is sometimes forgotten today. You even see some printers today offering "Free Design!" in their promotion. This is bad because it tends to devalue this important part of the whole marketing picture. And as they say, you get what you pay for.

Before we go much further let's define the word "design". The Thorndike Barnhardt, Scott Forseman Advanced dictionary defines "design" as "arrangement of detail, form and color in painting, weaving, building, etc." And since we are talking about promo design, we'll add that the arrangement of items in your ad or promo piece has to serve to create interest in and sell products or services that you're promoting.

So in design we're dealing with a number of elements, including but not necessarily limited to:

Blocks of copy (words)
Our offer
Headlines and sub-headlines
The company name
Photos
The phone number
Illustrations
Any folds in the sheet

One has to arrange these items so that they interest the reader and pull him along. You cannot just arrange big blocks of copy on the page, as that doesn't draw the reader in and tends to be unconfrontable. You have to break the copy up with sub-headlines, pictures, illustrations, and other visual elements. And the visual elements should be arranged on the page with a pleasing pattern.

You have to make your offer prominent. If the end result of the piece or ad is to get someone to call in, make that phone number BIG! Don't bury it in small type at the bottom. If you're working with a piece that folds, you'll need to figure out how it's going to open up. What does the reader see on the outside, then on the first inside flap as he opens it up, etc.? The progression of message has to be logical and serve to heighten the reader's interest as he goes through the piece.

Another point to consider in design is "mood lines". Different patterns or lines create a certain message or mood all by themselves. The book Landscape Architecture by John Ormsbee Simonds gives these various patterns.

In today's overcommunicated society, people tend to tune out advertising and promo. The sheer volume makes it impossible to digest even a small percentage of these messages. Quality design is a vital element in breaking through the noise and getting your message heard.

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