Why Professional Designers Provide More than a DIY Approach
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Some jobs require the kinds of skills that everybody feels they could do with just 4 hours of training. Just because you bought a car, it doesn’t mean you’re a championship winning racing driver. Graphic design is one such skill that many businesses feel they can get away with fulfilling on a DIY basis, but we can assure you that your brand’s image isn’t one of those jobs that you can get away with cutting corners on for long.
There are of course many new tools and apps available online that can make design work much simpler for individuals, to be used as an alternative to working alongside a professional designer. However, when it comes to total ability to align with your business objectives, there’s truly no alternative to working with a skilled graphic designer.
This article explores the key benefits of working with a professional graphic designer instead of trying to do it yourself, and why designers can provide your business with much more than the DIY approach can.
Graphic Designers understand the importance of brand consistency
According to Forbes, presenting your brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%. That’s a statistic you would do well not to ignore.
DIY design tools such as Canva, even the paid, pro version, can help you to create individual pieces of artwork, but they don’t give you the whole picture of what you should be thinking about, when it comes to aligning with your brand and the message you want to give. There’s no denying that AI and tools like this have made it very easy for small businesses to create posters and other pieces of designed artwork, but what they cannot bring is the total package.
A professional graphic designer understands the symbolism of colour, the use of different typography that works alongside your brand logo, and the mood that you want to instil in an audience when they see your branding. When you set them a brief, a professional designer is immediately visualising how everything will look consistently across your social media, your website and in your brochures.
A DIY design software gives you a logo, a professional designer gives you an entire brand visual.
Designers have a better set of tools to create artwork, and the knowledge to use them
Even if you pay to access premium features on your DIY browser-based design software, its capabilities will be fairly limited when compared to the full suite of tools and licenses a professional creative designer will have at their disposal.
Rather than choose from a selection of a few hundred fonts to effectively convey your brand message, from logo to website headers to brochure text, a professional designer will have access to over half a million fonts. With this level of choice, you need never compromise on your brand visuals again.
A professional designer should have been educated extensively in how to use pro Adobe software, such as Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. With these tools they can perform the kinds of visual magic that modern DIY programmes haven’t fully caught up with yet. Maybe one day they will, but they won’t come cheap. Added to this, a designer has been taught how to find the ways to create many different effects and visual flair, and their experience has enabled them to get there faster and better.
A Designer knows how to provide unique artwork
Whilst systems such as Canva are wildly popular, and with plenty of time to learn the systems, they are fairly limited in what they can offer in terms of individuality.
If you’re happy for your designs to come fresh from a template library, where any number of other businesses and brands can replicate it with minimal effort, then that is absolutely your right and you’re at least doing something to help your brand to shine.
However, a professional designer will take a blank canvas and create truly remarkable branded artwork that stands apart as unique. This is your business, and you owe it the benefit of individuality.
Competition to appeal to your target audience, and the money they are willing to spend, is fiercer than ever. You owe it to your business to help it to stand out as offering something completely different to the others, and having distinct brand visuals can help in a huge way.
Designers will save you time and effort
If you’re lucky enough to have countless hours of free time available to spend on learning the many aspects of your DIY software, then you can look forward to countless hours more coming up with concepts that might speak directly to your target audience. Building colourways that convey certain messages or evoke certain emotions. Creating alternative versions that are optimised to be used on social media, uniforms, websites and other branded items.
What might take you several days, or weeks to create, can be devised, created and sent to be a qualified designer in a matter of hours. It will be created with a major focus on how to be the most visually appealing without ever venturing away from what your brand is, and what is important to it.
By outsourcing this work to a professional designer, you effectively free yourself up to do the most important work, which is managing and building your business.
Great graphic design can be the difference between somebody remembering to come back to you or leaving you in the past forever. The team at Gala Education & Marketing can help you to make a lasting impact, no matter which platform you’re promoting your brand.
Whether you’re a start-up looking for help to give your brand the best possible start, or you’re looking to give your business the boost it deserves, give our Brand and Design Manager Samantha a call on 01709 911923, or why not drop us message via WhatsApp on 07450 413415, and let’s discuss your brand objectives.
