I read Design It Yourself: The Marketer´s Crash Course – In Visual Content Creation which is written by Shannon Johnson and Keith Frankel. The text has published by HubSpot, where Johnson and Frankel are both working, in the marketing section. The text is about how to design the best visual content for your customer to catch eyeballs by your marketing and giving the best free tools for doing that all by yourself.
I would say this text is very useful for my Study Unit and generally as well for myself since I´m using social media. If I would like to create my own social media pages as an influencer, this information on how to design would be really good to check out. As well today, and for the future that we are rapidly going towards, is almost necessary to have this kind of knowledge. Of course, you can always study such a topic or pay to learn more, but I think this free design-information is very useful for people. Especially for small companies or entrepreneurs who cannot offer to pay for marketing.
Why is it so hard?
The text states why creating images and snapping photos to catch customers eyes has become so difficult. It is proving that today the content should be less of showing the products features and focusing more on the viewers lifestyles, desires, and values. (Johnson & Frankel.) I totally agree because I would not buy something only because of the good-looking picture and advertisement, I would rather buy something if the values with the product and myself are similar.
I believe emotions in today’s marketing has a very big role too. If images or videos gives you a positive reaction in an emotional level, I think more likely people would give a reaction back to it as well. For example, when I see trustable people who I follow on Instagram posting and advertising a product or companies, I would give a change for those. I may have similar needs with the people I follow and obviously I know something from their lifestyles which makes it easier to trust the advertisement.
Giant Platform
There is over one trillion pages information on the internet and that is one of the reasons why the marketing should catch viewers eyes in less than three seconds. It is even crazy to think about that how much information there is for people to consume but for how little we can pay attention for. (Johnson & Frankel.) I think expensive companies will control the marketing in the future as they have money to do it. Who is paying the most can have the catchiest and professional made pictures to pop on your search, basically to everywhere if you pay enough. If you are not a computer user or social media user, you might need a more research than just this text to learn and to do your designs.
There is a list of five different types of visuals for blogs and social media: videos, photos, images, infographics and presentations or slideshows. There is also introduction for all those visuals and guidance how to use them and what is important in those visuals. (Johnson & Frankel). It is important information when you need to catch the views less than three seconds. And generally, to know what is catching the customers eyes, and what are the colors, styles, and different signs meaning for.
Compass to the Right Direction
The writers are introducing you a compass on how to start designing as a professional designer. There are 10 commandments of Do-It-Yourself Design by Johnson and Frankel. First of the tips is to know what you are trying to accomplish and then how to design the images to get there. And when you know what you are trying to accomplish you should establish a hierarchy and consider how you are making everything to happen. (Johnson & Frankel).
Those first tips of the Do-It-Yourself Designing are important to know. If you don’t know what you want from your products or if you don’t know your customers, it can be hard to do any kind of marketing. When you know your first group of customers and where to start marketing, you can more easily design the pictures or videos for you to catch your customers eyes. But do not do whatever you want or like, the text is perfectly reminding you what is good for designing and what is not.
Johnson and Frankel´s text gives really good information for beginners and for advised social media users. It gives the simply tips and reminds that less is more which applies for designing your images or videos. I learned many good tips for free! Now I know what is important to remember and to do when I want to start to create images or videos for marketing. Although I don’t really need that information right now but for the future for sure as I want to have my own business one day. There is also a great Do-It-Yourself Design Evaluation Checklist in the last page to use and check, if you have done everything for your design to be good enough for marketing.
Source
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