THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAND STORYTELLING

First impressions are important. With the increase of technology, our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. Without the appropriate graphic design for your brand, you can lose your audience interest in a matter of seconds, or worse, you could lose their trust.

USING GRAPHIC DESIGN FOR STORYTELLING

Graphic design is defined as visuals used for the purpose of communication. Storytelling through graphic design gives your audience an opportunity to understand your brand. All stories utilize plot, characters, and theme. However, graphic design uses these tools a little differently. When you are telling a story through graphic design the plot of your story should ask the question, “What are users trying to achieve?” Your product is the solution to that problem. Your characters are the users themselves. It is important to understand what demographic you are targeting. Ask yourself, “What are their wants and needs?” Your theme should be about helping users overcome obstacles. How can your product help your readers? How are you different from your competitors?

Make sure the graphic design elements you incorporate in your website, app, or other company content reflect the appropriate tone for your brand. Decide if you want your product to convey bright, bubbly, fun emotions or if you want to take a more serious tone. You can also decide if you want to use symbolic images which convey an implied meaning to your readers through culture context, or iconic images that look like what they represent and convey a more literal meaning to your reader.

Graphic design allows for an open-ended story that gives your audience the freedom to draw their own conclusions about your product. Graphic design visuals encourage individuals to make their own story around your product. This will help your brand resonate with your audience and make you more memorable.

BE EMOTIONAL

When it comes to storytelling with graphic design, it is more important that your design conveys strong emotion rather than a clear narrative or character arch. Good graphic design will give your audience an emotional connection to your brand. It’s important to make sure that your graphic design is both suitable for your brand and product, while also appealing to your customers. There are several tools graphic designers use in order to convey specific emotions including shapes, color, value, form, texture, typographical conventions, compositions, and Gestalt principles. Gestalt is a German word that means “unified whole”. Gestalt principles follow the psychological law that describes how people connote random shapes and images to a specific meaning or feeling. Graphic Designers use these principals to evoke a specific emotion in your audience. You want your audience to feel positive emotions when they see your product. You want your company logo to trigger a specific emotional reaction in your customer.

While it is important to make an emotional connection with your customers, it is also important to make an emotional connection with your employees. You want your employees to understand your brand and your mission statement. Graphic design will give you the emotional pull to help your employees empathize with your brand, which will make for a better work environment.

GRAB YOUR AUDIENCE'S ATTENTION

The visual cortex of the brain is the largest, making it easier to grab your audience’s attention with graphic design images than just normal text. You want your content to be visible on platforms that people are already using. Graphic design elements will capture your audience’s attention whether they are viewing your content via mobile device or social media platforms. The rise in popularity in social media platforms like Pinterest, Snap Chat, and Instagram are proof that images are a powerful and entertaining tool used in storytelling. However, even text-based platforms use graphic design in order to grab their readers’ attention. Graphic images will help you, not only capture your audience’s attention, but effectively communicate your brand. Good graphic design will make sure that your viewers don’t have to put a lot of effort into understanding your story. Viewers will often lose interest if interacting with your content requires a lot of scrolling, clicking, or a combination of both. Good graphic design will also help establish trust with your customers. If a website looks too cluttered and the text is either too big or too small users will deem the site untrustworthy.

Utilize graphic design to show your audience your brand, instead of telling your audience about your brand through text. Graphic design will also help you to break down complex ideas. People can easily get the wrong idea about your brand or product. You want to make it easy for your audience to understand what your brand is all about so that you leave a long-lasting impression in their minds. Colorful and attractive images will encourage people to share your content on social media.

HOW VIVISCAPE CAN HELP

Well designed content will have customers on your site for longer, remembering your brand, and coming back for more. Storytelling with graphic design is a big journey to embark on. Viviscape will help you have a sharp competitive edge in your field by developing graphic design that will give you an emotional connection to your customers and leave a long-lasting first impression. Together we can help you tell the story that you want to tell. Click here to get started with Viviscape.