When you have to tell a story, how would you like it to be? All words or a mix of words and pictures to convey the message? You probably chose the second option. And that’s why visuals have become essential entities in marketing. Because after all, good marketing is about telling a convincing story to your customers.
69% of marketers started using more visuals in their marketing strategies by the year 2019. Since then there has been no turning back. Brands big and small have been actively using visuals to attract the attention of their target audience.
So, if you look at the marketing spending of brands big and small, graphic design production is a big chunk of it. And there is a constant debate on how to source designs and how much to spend on them. In this blog, we’ll talk about one of the recent favorites of marketers, a cost-effective way to tackle any brand’s graphic design requirements – an unlimited graphic design subscription.
Before we delve into the nuances of unlimited graphic design subscription services, we’ll quickly look at why brands need graphic design and how they usually source these designs.
Launching a new business? Then you need graphic design services to help establish your brand identity. There are the very basics like logo design, business card design, and even store signage if you own a physical store.
Existing businesses need designs to:
Well, that’s just a handful. And these promotional and conversational designs for a brand can be in the form of:
Now that we have spoken about the “why” we’ll tell you about the “how” of sourcing designs for a business.
There is one design production idea that helps fill all the gaps in these options – a design subscription.
We’ll give you a quick walkthrough of the many benefits that an unlimited graphic design subscription offers.
That said, we should also tell you that not all brands might find an unlimited graphic design subscription to be the most practical idea to stick with. Let’s discuss some of the situations where this might be the case.
Having weighed the highs and lows of an unlimited graphic design subscription, if you make up your mind that this is something you want to try for your brand, here are some tips for you. These are tips to ensure the optimum utilization of the chosen subscription. Ways to be sure that you are making the most of the chosen service and actually using it to boost your marketing efforts.
Or work with the team to create one if you do not already have it! A brand style guide is like a reference manual that captures the nuances of design and copy for your brand’s marketing content. This will be a documentation of details like:
Having a brand style guide can set a strong direction for your long-term collaboration with the unlimited graphic design subscription provider. Because in most cases there will be a dedicated designer or a team that will work on all of your designs. This will be like having your own in-house team but without the hassle of actually managing one.
Considering that the same team will be handling all your designs, helping the team understand your brand better will be a good starting point in the collaboration.
Just like your brand style guide, your design brief will eliminate communication gaps in your design collaboration. The only difference is that the design brief will delve into the details specific to the design request in the picture. For example, the brief for a social media design will be different from that for a flyer design.
The design brief tells your design team the essential details of your campaign including things like:
Some of these details might remain constant for more than one campaign. You can retain them and only change the variables for each design request. That’s another perk of working with the same team for all your designs. You do not have to go over all the details for each and every design.
When you compare many unlimited graphic design services and choose one, pay attention to the scope. What kind of designs are included in your monthly subscription rate? For example, presentations, illustrations, and even branded merchandise designs like T-shirts are often the overlooked details in such subscriptions. Why waste them?
So, start by understanding the types of designs covered in the unlimited design service. And then list down all the designs that will add value to your brand. Based on your short-term and long-term marketing goals you can then prioritize these designs.
Whenever there is an upcoming sale you might have a lot of design requests lined up. Social media ads, posts for the Feed and Story, banner ads and so much more. If the chosen design subscription allows multiple active requests, make use of it.
Instead of giving your design requests one by one, have as many active requests as supported by the plan. This way, you will have more designs coming in within a short period. And you can also conveniently schedule your posts so as to have the campaign up and running in no time.
Design feedback is crucial in any design collaboration, particularly with an unlimited graphic design subscription. When you point out what you like and don’t like about a design, you are establishing a clear line of communication with your design team. Since you will be working with them for all your designs, it helps when you give timely feedback.
“The logo will look good in a different shade of green” is not the best feedback you can give. Include details about the kind of message you think the design is sending out. Point out how the design aligns or does not align with your brand’s visual style. A crisp yet clear design feedback prevents back-and-forth communication and helps the design team refine the designs to meet your expectations.
One other thing to remember here is the thing about unlimited revisions. Which means that you can ask for any number of changes and the team will be happy to revise the design for you. Don’t be afraid to ask for changes “assuming” that your designers will feel offended. You will be the best judge of your designs. So, you do not have to settle down for anything less than what feels on-point for your campaign and for your brand.
The design team gives you the design. You share it with your internal teams. Your internal teams come back with feedback and then you go back to the design team for changes. As you can see this whole loop can take quite a lot of time.
To shorten this, you can add all the stakeholders to the project provided your subscription allows that. If you have the option to add as many team members as you like, go ahead and utilize this feature. This will eliminate a lot of bottlenecks in marketing.
Whenever you have those surges in design requirements try adding more subscriptions. When you are planning to focus more on your blog, for example. You might want additional blog images and social media content to promote your blog posts. You might sometimes want this in addition to the regular promotional and day-to-day designs for your brand.
When you have to squeeze in extra designs each day, additional subscriptions save you a lot of time. In fact, some unlimited graphic design subscription providers even give you special discounted rates when you have to add more brands or subscriptions.
Similar to unprecedented surges, there might be periods when you do not need many designs. So, paying for the subscription might feel like an unwanted load on your budget. If you think your design requests might not increase anytime soon, you can always cancel the subscription since there are no contracts. But if this decline in requirements is going to be a short-term thing, you can pause your subscription. This way, when you get back to your usual design workload you can be sure that the same team that once handled your designs will be there for you when you resume. And the subscription rate will remain the same as earlier even if the rates have changed for new subscribers.
These are just a handful of ideas to give you a taste of what you can do to maximum utilize your subscription. After all, you choose an unlimited graphic design subscription mainly to save money. So, to maximize your returns and make this decision a worthy investment, make use of all the benefits included with your subscription. This will be one way to ensure that your design subscription boosts the performance of your marketing efforts.
