Why is Design Important?

With a tight budget, it can be easy to save money by not hiring a trained graphic designer. It may seem unimportant, however, I am here to convince you otherwise. We are all a part of individual brands, whether you are a music artist, company owner, or even another graphic designer. Every brand needs a recognizable face that follows brand guidelines and is appealing to look at. This gains any customer's trust and may have a major effect on someone choosing your product over someone else’s. I would even argue your brand is just as important as the quality of your product. Don’t just take my word for it. I will list some statistics and reasons as to why design is important.

According to a report from McKinsey done in 2018, businesses that embrace graphic design generate 32% more revenue and 56% more shareholder returns on average. These are rather big numbers that demonstrate its’ positive effects on a brand. If you are a music artist, for example, your cover art is the first thing that a potential listener will see before deciding whether or not your music is worth listening to. There are also a lot of scams and untrustworthy sources nowadays. If you are selling a physical product, especially on an online marketplace, your professional branding will likely be a major factor in what brings trust to a new potential customer. Brands can also convey a visual story and communicate what your brand is about. Design helps you tell a whole story, and a good designer will know how to incorporate it into your marketing, website, and even a logo. Cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner suggests we are 22x more likely to remember something when it is communicated through a story. A study done by Red Website Design in 2018 found that a whole 94% of consumers cited that design was the main reason for leaving or mistrusting a website. As we can see through these studies, there is real evidence for the importance and effect that good design can have on your brand.

I believe the graphic design industry will never go out of business, and over time, as it expands, more and more individuals will recognize its importance to this world. As a designer, I get to have a positive effect on the business of brands and individuals that I support and trust. It is exciting to see the capabilities of design and the technological advances that are making it more accessible. This is raising the standard of design and bringing more of a challenge to designers like me. On the downside, there are a lot of designers with very little experience and design knowledge that are being trusted without being properly equipped. When searching for a designer to hire, make sure you are hiring an individual with experience in the industry, a strong portfolio, and a creative mind. A good designer can communicate a lot through a brand with a very simple design. I hope what I have to say about the importance of design has had an impact on your view of it. As a designer myself with a wide range of experience, I am always open to commission requests. Simply fill out my contact form and I will make sure to get back to you.

The Future of Design

Since Covid, our lives have changed drastically. A lot of these changes have held us back from opportunity, but some have actually pushed us forward. With the challenge of us not being able to meet up, Zoom calls started to become a common method of meeting, Jobs are now able to fully remote like never before, and AI has advanced tremendously. Challenges have had to overcome, have forced us to invent and solve problems. I particularly want to look at how these changes affect the design industry. I will be looking at AI along with some other technological advances to debate the argument that AI will take over our jobs. As a quick summary of AI technology, AI stands for artificial intelligence. This AI is used to make our computers think in ways that normally only people do, to simulate how we think, but at a much faster pace. AI is programmed and isn’t fully capable of doing everything the human mind can do. It can only simulate our minds by processing information in the way that it is programmed to do so.

AI in general has been expanding drastically in a variety of career fields, but lately, we have been seeing big moves in AI generative art. Some of the popular software that is being used for this generative art include NightCafe and DALL-E. By simply typing in a description of what you want to create, the AI will look at images of keywords you put in to create a very impressive photo manipulation that closely matches. Because of this, the question arises. “Can AI replace graphic designers?” If it can create any image you tell it and is continuing to advance, why couldn’t it replace a real designer? You can’t program creativity and the same design principles that we designers have trained with for years. With AI you can only develop a direct interpretation. It can be used to produce ideas and could be a great tool for designers, but I do not believe it will ever replace graphic designers. Seeing how AI is being built into the Adobe Suite further, it is being used with music production, video production, and about everything to some degree, I do believe AI is the future. AI may seem a little scary. We ask ourselves if it could take our jobs, or be used for corruption, but I believe the opportunity it will bring is something to look forward to. Similar to computers and mobile phones, our last generation wasn’t sure about them as they became a reality. Computers have been used for corruption, but they have also been an amazing tool for our advancement.

In conclusion, we shouldn’t be afraid of what we don’t understand. The standard of design will be leveling up as AI grows, but it will never replace us. As designers, it is our job to learn about this opportunity and take advantage of it with our careers to stay on top.