Why Good Design is Important to Small Business
Every once in a while, you may notice a well-known company will change their logo, update their website, switch around their color palette, or make some other tweak to their brand. And very often, those changes will be met with a chorus of criticism and confusion. Why the change? Isn’t that logo good enough? How will anyone recognize your brand?
Believe it or not, there are some very important reasons for a company-wide visual rebranding, but we’ll save that for another blog post. Today, we’re here to talk about the intention of design and help you understand why good design is so important for your own business.
Good design lasts a long time
Most people don’t pay attention to design, which is okay! We really only tend to notice when something we’re used to changes drastically. For instance, who really noticed when Bank of America changed their logo? The colors got darker, the font changed, and the flag mark added more space between the stripes. For the majority of people, even customers, the change had very little impact on their recognition of the bank. This says a good deal about the logo, which has been in effect since 2001. It’s iconic, simple, and still relevant nearly 20 years later.
An example of a brand design which didn’t hold up as well is Zendesk. The video they made is a wonderful journey through the creative process of their team. The original Buddha mascot was incredibly iconic, but after 9 years it felt restrictive and unprofessional. Simplifying the logo down to basic geometric shapes gave them the new Zendesk logo as well as a set of logos for their many products. It’s smart, and we’re excited to see how well it holds up after another 9 years.
You’ll definitely recognize most of these logos. Fun fact: the average age of the logomarks on this list are 186 years, and the oldest logo dates back to 1366, over 650 years ago.
Smart design = good customer service
Believe it or not, design is very much connected to customer service. Good design is easy to use, and therefore easy to understand. Think about a “ring for service” bell on a front desk counter. Would a customer ring the bell if it was covered in spikes? Or peanut butter? Probably not. Because the bell is simple to use, people ring it and can easily be helped.
Now imagine a retail store, a business that sells home goods. The owner of that store wants customers to come in, browse, select items, and make purchases as quickly and easily as possible. So it would be best to not block visitors at the door with a large shelf! Or to put two of the same items on separate sides of the store! Or to keep someone from purchasing with a complicated checkout process! The store owner must be careful to make the customer’s experience positive and provide service quickly and organically.
We think about good design in very much the same way. Brands should be instantly recognizable and convey the right message. Websites should be easy to use and understand; so simple you can navigate them with your eyes closed— literally! Modern websites should be made for vision-impaired visitors to use and accessible to people from all walks of life, the same way stores are equipped with ramps and doorways for mobility needs. Don’t alienate your customers with poor design and cheap service.
Good design is hard
It’s not easy to implement good design. It can be frustrating, time-consuming, and very expensive for a small business to develop a brand, build a working website, and create eye-catching marketing materials on a near-daily basis. Sometimes, it’s easier to just slap the Papyrus font on some flower clipart and call it a day. But we also know that someone dedicated to taking their business to the next level will want to invest in a professional designer, someone who can support that growth and grow your brand.
We understand when the budget is too small, or when your business doesn’t need a logo or website right away. We’re here to help you decide what’s best for your company, to make those hard choices, and to design your company strategy before we design your brand.
Good design rocks!
As we said earlier, good design doesn’t just apply to websites and logos. Your business plan and the process by which your company operates has to be designed. Good phone etiquette, low-cost product packaging, and even the placement of the cash register in relation to the front door—these are all examples of customer service design in action.
We are uniquely equipped with years of professional experience building websites and creating recognizable brands for businesses all across America. Our goal is to make running your company easier through good design, so we purposely designed our services to be simple and easy. You’ll especially love our industry-standard pricing, with no hidden fees or costs, because we believe in being an ongoing partner in your business’s success.
We also fight hard for education in the business industry. We know that many design agencies use ignorance to their advantage, overcharging for services and selling products you just don’t need. Chimento Agency wants to educate business owners on web, marketing, and design so you’ll be better equipped to make decisions and run your business how you want. We’re here to make your life as easy as possible, to design it beautifully and for the future.
If you’re interested in making good design a part of your business, call (614) 612-0446 or email [email protected] to get started.
