Sarah Roberts
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ADV Marketing. ADV Marketing develops high quality and cost-effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship driven business model and customized marketing solutions makes us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, creative director at ADV Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on Marketing Matters every other Monday to discuss business to business marketing topics. Now let’s get into the episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing related and how it applies to your business. And I actually almost made it all the way through that intro without having to look down at my paper to remember.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
You need to stop outing yourself. You draw attention to it though, whenever you say it.
 
Sarah Roberts
I feel like it’s very noticeable though that I’m looking down, but maybe not. Okay. Any whose. Welcome to Marketing Matters. I’m Sarah Roberts, creative director at ADV Marketing.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
And I’m Morgan Hutcherson, an account manager at ADV Marketing.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yes, and we’re very excited to be here today talking about I think this is the last episode of the season.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Which is good because I thought the previous episode was the last episode.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. So, it’s like a bonus at this point.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
It’s so funny. I feel like the season’s like flown by, but last season, the first season I was on, it felt like it took forever.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, maybe that’s an indicator that you’re getting the hang of it. Maybe. Who knows? But anyway, we are going to be talking about what makes a design good. And this question is more than just what is subjectively my preferences in design or what do I want my brand to look like? It’s what are the basic principles of a really good design and spoiler alert, it all goes back to the purpose and how it’s communicated. So, we’ll talk about that as well. But we’re going to go through some basic design principles and we’re going to go through some basic tenets that kind of build the foundation of design and how we as humans process a designed document and what makes it more effective in terms of effectively communicating what you want it to communicate. So, we’re taking like the subjectivity and the preference out of it, and we’re just talking about basic core foundations of design. So first we’re in start with design principles, and there are these things called gestalt principles, which I know you know, and they’re actually like a big psychology thing. They are something you learn about in like psychology one on one or in basic psychology books, because it’s all about how we as people process incoming information, visual information and it very much all leads back to like how we have developed as human beings to survive. So, it actually is about how we process our world and how design takes advantage of that. So basic Gestalt principles are proximity, closure, similarity, continuity, organization and symmetry. So, I’m going to go through each one.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
It’s going to be a lot.
 
Sarah Roberts
I know, but they’ll be easy.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Can I do a little disclaimer?
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
If you’re not, like, not familiar with them after this episode, I would go look them up and look at the actual, like, visuals that are assigned with them because we can describe it as much as we want. But when you’re actually looking at it, you can for sure see like the difference between a piece that isn’t implementing one of these principles and a piece that is.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yes. And I should say there’s not really a right or wrong in each one. It’s what is communicated and what is not communicated. So, if you think about like modern logos are really, really simplified, they’re very flat. And we’re going to talk about dimension in a couple of these. There’s not a lot going on in them, but that serves a purpose, right? Like simplicity and minimalism, serve a communication purpose, just as maximalism serves a purpose as well. And certain design elements make you perceive a logo, a print media document, something like differently. Anyways, so Gestalt if you want to look it up, that’s g e s t a l t principle. And we’ll start with proximity. Proximity means that have two design elements or text boxes or lines are close together. The brain perceives it as being grouped together, even if they’re not connecting. So, if they’re close together, that means they go together. Closure means that even if you have a gap in a line, your brain’s going to fill in the gap if it’s close enough. So, if you think about like dotted lines, that’s an exact excellent example of closure, because you still realize it’s a line, even though it’s not one collective, connected line. Similarity is if there’s two similar things next to each other, they’re grouped together. Continuity. Do I remember what continuity is? I’m not really sure we’ll skip that. Organization is how you organize information on a page. So, if you put something in the top left, that’s going to be where most of the attention goes to first. That is like prime real estate. Also, recency and primacy I think is the opposite of recency, where it comes first instead of last. Do you remember there’s a there’s a certain psychological principle that if something comes last or something comes first, you remember it better? I think it’s primacy and probably, well, you know I’ll coin the new term.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay, so if things come first, you remember it better.
 
Sarah Roberts
Or last, that’s saying like if the very top header that’s more memorable and the very bottom footer is more memorable. So that’s why you typically see cold actions there because it’s first and last. Does that make sense? It’s like the borders. So, organization matters on a page. Symmetry is about balance. So heavier things make more sense at the bottom of the page. And I realize that’s really complicated because like its design, it doesn’t weigh anything. But if you have like something super blocky or like, very bold, it’s going to feel better at the bottom because Balance says that it will fall down, if that makes sense, and then lighter elements will stay and float up higher. Other part of symmetry is that if you have something on one side of the page, you want it balanced out with something else on the other side of page. But this is an example of like there’s no right or wrong here because asymmetry serves as a focal point. So, like if you have symmetry, nothing stands out because it’s all balanced. If you have imbalance, your eyes immediately going to go to the thing that’s out of balance because it’s going to attract your attention. Attracting attention is the name of the game, so you might want to use asymmetry, not just symmetry to your advantage in designs. So, who knows what continuity is.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it’s that one like I’m just thinking of the Gestalt principles that we’ve gone over because we have gone over almost all of them and you remember that one. It’s like the food in the pan? Is that it?
 
Sarah Roberts
Yes. Okay. Continuity is the journey line. Okay. Yeah. Now I know what continuity is. Thank you, Morgan. So, continuity is when things fall in line. And actually, it’s whether or not you want to portray when your organization. Yeah. So, if you lack continuity, you kind of inspire chaos fun art, history, fact in I can’t remember what it was. I think it was the Renaissance and the period after the Renaissance. But the name is, I think it’s like Rosko or something.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Did you take an art history class?
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay. Yeah, I like. I remember this of our art history.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. There’s this part in the Renaissance, everything is in a grid, right? And like, the Renaissance was where the perspective lines came into play. You know, this, like, the horizon line perspective was discovered. Like, there’s a ton of Greek Roman paintings where there’s a very defined point in the distance. That is like the perspective point, the period after the Renaissance. They flip that around. So, they’re like going against the status quo. Basically, in a new art movement, everything became diagonal. So instead of organizing things on a horizon line that was straight across, they started organizing things off the diagonal. When you start organizing things off, the diagonal looks and feels chaotic and you can see that in a lot of films, when the main character is going through a period of crisis, they tilt the camera. Yeah. So now you’ll notice it.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
That’s crazy. You remember this stuff. I did not remember anything in my art history class, but when you said Rosko, I was like, yeah, yeah.
 
Sarah Roberts
There’s a lot of movement. Movement is conveyed through diagonal lines. So, continuity tells a story by how things fall in line. Makes more sense if you’re looking at a visual. So, you know.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
I highly recommend you look at the visuals after this if you want like more of an example and a grasp on these principles.
 
 
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And what you really want to know is looking at them, how does it make you feel and what do you pay attention to first, which we’re going to go over like what questions to ask yourself when you’re giving feedback on a design. But yeah, it’s not right or wrong. It’s just what is being conveyed over something else. And there’s always a reason for something and it’s just what does the reason make sense for the purpose of the product?
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah.
 
Sarah Roberts
Okay. So, with that, another important element of design is like actual communication of content, and that will always, always lead back to knowing your audience and knowing your purpose. So, you cannot create something without knowing who you’re creating it for and why it’s being created. Everything that you judge about a design needs to lead back to those two questions. There’s a couple of other like, I guess best practices, one of which being be concise, use simple language, don’t opt for the hundred-dollar word when you could use the $20 word. Have language that makes sense for your audience and your purpose and make sure it matches your objective. And then we said here before, skim ability is huge. You want your key takeaways to be obvious. Within the first 5 seconds of looking at a document. So, there’s best practices, but there’s also knowing why you’re creating something and who you’re creating it for. And good design always involves a feedback process because it’s very, very rare that the best version of whatever you want to create is going to be your first version. So, things get good in revisions.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and I think a lot of marketers out there are self-taught graphic designers because like unless you have that arts degree, you’re just not focused on that. And like we both are.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
And you’ve definitely had like a little bit more experience than I have, but I feel like the way I’ve gotten better over these like last ten months here, like it’s because I look at my designs and figure out how to make them better each time. And it really is like, Sarah will be reviser and she’ll literally just start calling out Gestalt principles and be like, the proximity is off on this like you to have them closer together. And that is how I’ve gotten better and better with my designs.
 
Sarah Roberts
And asking how can I be better in relation to what this document is supposed to do, like what its purpose is?
 
Morgan Hutcherson
And that’s helped me reviewing other materials as well. And like, how can I make this better with the design even though I’m not formally trained in graphic design?
 
Sarah Roberts
That’s a good point. Marketers nowadays for economical cost-effective marketing, marketers have to do a lot with like they have to kind of work magic with what they’re given that it takes a lot of creativity, a lot of resourcefulness and that means that marketers end up with very large skill sets because they learn how to do what they need to do. Given the task at hand and given the audience and purpose and objective of the task at hand, they figure out how to communicate that best regardless of the format that they pick in the end, they figure out how to do it. So good design is all about process and practice and feedback and having a draft first but then knowing that a draft gets better with review. Okay. We’re going to take a quick break here. And when we’re going to come back, we’re going to talk more about reviewing and questions to ask yourself when you’re reviewing a design to have the best feedback for design, whether you’re reviewing your own design or someone else’s.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yes.
 
Sarah Roberts
Okay. We’ll see you then.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Welcome back from that break, y’all. I hope you once again enjoyed our little elevator music montage. I love it.
 
Sarah Roberts
It’s so funny in the edited versions of these episodes, when you watch them back, it’s just really funny because when we film, obviously we don’t hear the music, but then like we always mention it in the final episode.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Because we’re so proud of it, we edited it and it is so cute.
 
Sarah Roberts
Anyway.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay, so let’s get into questions you can ask yourself when you’re reviewing either something you’ve created or if you’re reviewing someone else’s work, or sometimes I just like when I want to get better at graphic design. I look at designs in the world and like, ask myself these questions.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yep.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
So, I guess let’s start first. I feel like anyone, like as soon as you get the document, the first thing you should be asking yourself is like, what is my eye drawn to first? And is that what should capture my attention first? So, like typical examples are like headers. Obviously, you want those to stand out for skim ability reasons. Is that where you’re going to it? Is there an image of your product or service that you really want people to be aware of, or is that more like filler? And that’s getting your attention too quickly?
 
Sarah Roberts
Is the random red line that’s meant to be an accent where you look at first and if it is like maybe, you want something else to capture attention.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
That’s a big thing with color because a lot of the companies I see like they have very bold colors and they don’t always put them to the best use on their designs. Like if they have like a bright orange or something. It’s like that can be so powerful. But if you’re putting it all over the page, you’re like putting it in the wrong spot. Then I’m just going to go see that bold orange color instead of, anything else that’s more muted?
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it dulls it out. The contrast isn’t there, which contrast is huge. We haven’t talked about that, but anything that stands out is like a great tool for capturing attention.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. And then after you’ve looked at the design for about like 5 seconds, look away and ask yourself, what can you recall? Is there anything memorable about that? Is that the main thing you want to remember or what the client or whoever is getting this piece to remember? And if it’s not okay, how do you make it more memorable?
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, that’s a good one.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
And then lastly, is the information overwhelming? Are you trying to put too much on a page? Is it too little of information? And do you know where to look first on the page for the information?
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Design is about guiding an eye and it’s about making sure you know where it goes. Really, really advanced designers and design agencies use eye tracking software for really high stakes design. And when I say high stakes design, I mean like, like probably billboards surrounded around a Super Bowl ad or like something that takes a lot of investment and they want to get right the first time and not continuously test something till it dies, like that kind of thing. They want to know that they’re getting the right attention in the right spot, so they’ll have eye trackers and they’ll run analysis based off of like a focus group to where people look first. And then there’s a heat map that comes out of that analysis where it’s like, this is where they’re looking. And that is a really quantitative way to tell where an eye is guided. But overall, a design is guiding and eye. And I it’s just it’s funneling and putting in guardrails for like what you’re perceiving and when you’re perceiving it while you’re looking at a document and that’s within a really, really, really short time frame, which is why you want to look at it 5 seconds and look away and see what you took away from it.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
That’s funny that you brought that up, because I was also thinking the same thing about the heat map, because I remember like when we would do AB test in school. That was like one of the things we could do on the Qualtrics surveys we would create. And it was always interesting to see like what people were drawn to, and it’s always like pictures and headings.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yes.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
And then you get like those random ones that are like some random design that like how you know that they’re like, not actually like paying attention.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And also, like I said, I think earlier in this podcast, the top left is always where your eye is going to go. Ok, caveat, I’m talking about like English speaking left to right, well, not English speaking, maybe romance languages, the ones that go left to right, I think.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, right. It’s like pretty standard, though, like reading a book.
 
Sarah Roberts
If you read right to left, obviously the top left is not going to be your first go to. But for romance languages, cultures that have a romance language, it’s going to be left to right. So, your eye immediately goes top left.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
And a good analogy I like to give because I feel like all people think about this more than like actual print media pieces, especially if you’re applying for jobs. Think about how people read resumes and it’s like they look at the title, like your name. Contact info and they skim down and it’s also kind of like a E and they really look at those first two job title experiences and some of those bullet points and then anything after that. They’re really skimming it and not looking at it and that’s pretty standard for any graphic design.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, yeah. Design can be impactful and it can want people, it can make people want to be drawn in or it can draw them in just from how you design something. But overall, you’re dealing with people with very, very, very short a very short attention spans or very limited attention to give. So, you have to take advantage of what little time they do have and make sure that what you want to stand out is the thing standing out, not your random red accent line.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and humans are just lazy by nature. They’re not going to read a full one page. Or if it’s just like all one color, hard to decipher too much text. Like all the bad design principles.
 
Sarah Roberts
Yes. So, we don’t want that. Okay, well, that was a good episode. It was a great way to end this season. We’re going to take a season break, I guess, and then come back with maybe season six. If I labeled this podcast outline correctly.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
I think we are on season five. I think that’s also been a theme throughout the season is what season are we on?
 
Sarah Roberts
An overall centralizing theme, but we’ll be back with the new season relatively quickly. But yeah, so a great final episode. Be sure to subscribe so you know, when the next season drops or follow us on LinkedIn, rate the podcast and we won’t see you in two weeks. We’ll have a little bit longer break than that, but we will see you soon.
 
Morgan Hutcherson
Bye, guys.