The Psychological Power of Graphic Design: Manipulating Your Market Through Visual Appeal

As a professional marketer, you are driven by what your customers expect to sell. Sometimes it is a useful and valuable product; sometimes it is a dry and esoteric concept. Most of the time, it’s something no one really needs, but it’s your job to sell it. The client has placed his trust in you and will pay you for your effort. No one said that marketing was always going to be fun and glamorous.

Given the task of creating an ad, website, brochure, or trade show, your goal is to present your client’s work so everyone will notice it, regardless of whether they need it or will ultimately buy it.

The first question I would ask is, who is your target market? If we’re selling a geriatric product or service, that’s very different from selling something to the tween segment. But a lot of work we do in this field is far removed from the everyday knowledge of the mass consumer market. For example, selling a particular type of industrial technology to the world’s wastewater engineers. Or present a series of books on the history of the First World War to a small group of war fans around the world. Each of these examples calls for a different approach to getting at what “moves” a given market.

Recently, the owner of a dance school contacted me and wanted her website redesigned to reflect her personality. She felt that if she visited her and looked at her work, she would be able to capture the essence of her spirit and create graphics to match.

This is a common misconception among people outside of the marketing field. They all believe that they are truly unique and possess some kind of special quality that will make them an overnight sensation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Working to package a marketing concept involves the use of a finite variety of typographic styles, textual content, colors, visual images, shapes and sizes dictated by the dimensions of the final product we are creating and has very little to do with whether the client is a glamor. .queen or crazy military. If what we are selling is related to those last two descriptions, then there may be some reason to apply such ideas. But in my thirty-five years of experience, graphic design is most effective when it relates to current aesthetic trends, but exceeds the norm with innovation and surprise. It must be competitive with the best efforts in the world while also being meaningful to your target market.

What font styles work best?

This depends a lot on who we are targeting. Just as tweens might not appreciate the grace and elegance of a classic font tastefully used in proper balance with its surrounding elements, an older market may bristle at an avant-garde use of a brash typeface defiantly scrawled on a design. bold. However, there is a time and a place for each of these techniques.

What colors work best?

Based on multiple studies conducted over a fifty year period in several different countries, regardless of age or gender, the color blue was ranked as the most preferred color to use for a variety of purposes and goals. The second options were green and purple. The least favorite colors were orange, gray and brown. However, each of the studies mentioned that cultural differences affected favorite colors due to emotional relationships linked to color, for example, associations with grief, depression, mental illness, terrorism, etc. Other studies also concluded that men and women react to color differently, with men being more oblivious to both color and subtlety, while women were more attentive and knowledgeable about both. Additionally, in studies conducted in laboratory settings to examine how color affected behavior, blue was found to have a calming and relaxing effect, while red motivated a faster response. When age was examined more closely, the younger the subject, the more likely they were to prefer bright colors such as red or yellow. Furthermore, in the presence of these same bright colors, all respondents’ perceptions and judgments about size or worth tended to be higher and more favorable than when influenced by blues or greens that elicited more realistic and slower reactions.

What does this mean in terms of graphic design?

Much of what has been found through scientific or psychological studies basically appears to be common sense. Young people like bright colors and older people like cooler, more conservative colors. However, a truism about color doesn’t quite work when you review the results of the various preference studies. According to color theory, there are three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, and the complementary color of each primary color is determined by mixing the other two primary colors. This means that the complementary color of red is green; the complementary color of blue is orange; and the complementary color of yellow is purple. What is striking is that most people did not like orange; however, it is the most complementary color to wear with everyone’s favorite color, blue.

So, do we throw these conclusions out the window? Hardly. It’s a safe bet that if you used blue as the color scheme for women with breast cancer, men with a penchant for war, and kids who buy shoes, none would be repulsed by the presentation. I think the use of an accent color would be the most sensitive issue and looking at the results of the studies should provide a reliable guide here. Also, one should not overlook the fact that there are an infinity of shades and shades of blue, which further complicates the matter. If the blue you choose leans toward green, it’s more likely to be described as a turquoise, while a blue that leans more toward red might be interpreted as a purple or magenta. These variations alter assumptions about the use of secondary or tertiary colors to complement. Another major concern regarding color has to do with contrast, which can affect the readability of text if used incorrectly.

What visual images sell best?

Years ago, before computers, desktop publishing, and the Internet, it was common knowledge among industry insiders that babies and dogs were the images used on newsstands to capture the hearts of the magazine-buying public. . In an extensive Google search today I have not been able to back up that theory. Times have changed and with it the flavors of our culture. Another mantra from years past was that “sex sells.” Whether we agree with that or not, sex rarely has a place within the apps we marketers must use.

Here’s what one expert, Dick Stolley, founding managing editor of People magazine, had to say about which cover images sell his magazine best:

“Young is better than old. Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor. Movies are better than music. Music is better than TV. TV is better than sports…and anything is better.” than politics.” In 1999, he added, “And nothing beats dead celebrity,” a fact that has been heavily backed up with the best-selling newsstand front pages of all time on the deaths of John Lennon, Princess Diana and recently Michael Jackson.

However, for those of us who sell widgets, these guidelines are irrelevant. The correct image to use in marketing obviously has to be related to what we are selling. This does not mean that we must show a photo or illustration of the subject. Sometimes that’s not the best way to go. Instead, we must ask ourselves, what will best communicate to the ideal buyer why they should act immediately to proceed with a purchase of what we are presenting? How we “package” that appeal will be the magic wand to motivate their response.

Well, that doesn’t give you much direction, does it? Having been in this situation countless times in my career, I have come to trust this as the best way to accomplish this goal. After establishing the main characteristic of the market based on the relevance of age, gender, occupation, education or location, I assume that everyone wants to be treated as if they were the most desirable customers in the world. So I dress my presentations in the garb of the rich and successful, using sophisticated font, intelligence, color, imagery, and layout options. I don’t resort to gimmicks or cheeky designs. Rather, I trust methods that use elegance and class.

One of the reasons I do this is because I have to please the customer first and foremost. Since you are usually rich and successful, you can immediately relate to this style. Second, typical of human nature, your potential market, regardless of demographics, wants to identify with the rich and famous and will likely view your presentation as something that type of person would want. So, with your curiosity piqued, the presentation has accomplished the first important step in the process. How well you’ve delivered the message and enticed him to act will determine whether he proceeds with a purchase.

While this methodology may contradict the logic of defining one’s target market if they happen to be children or street gang members, in my experience, most of the people we appeal to are people with the resources (hopefully) to be able to afford whatever we need. they are selling; old enough to understand and appreciate our proposal; and finally, a member of American culture with needs and wants shaped by current technology, events, and the national perspective. With that as a starting point, my forays into marketing have been largely successful for those who hired me, with the understanding that everyone prefers to go “first class.”