Principles of Visual Communication for Businesses

This article was written for and first published in the Slovenian online magazine for entrepreneurs Podjetnik.net. You can retrieve the original article here.

Use shapes, colors, and fonts as a language to tell your story, and they will lead you to unique visual solutions tailored to your business needs.

The article is intended for businesses, entrepreneurs, and designers who seek in-depth knowledge of the remarkable capabilities of our brains in visual creation and how to utilize these abilities in graphic design to contribute to a company's promotion, sales, and growth.

These abilities encompass a unique process that is a distinct human trait, and this process is called creativity.

Often, the first association with creativity is artistic expression or graphic design, as the results of these activities quickly manifest as tangible and materialized outcomes of the creative process.

There are many definitions of what creativity is, and we will likely never be able to fully encapsulate the complexity of this concept with a single definition. However, the simplest and most understandable definition that this article relies on is by Welch and McPherson (2012), who state, "Creativity is the human capacity to use your imagination and create to create solutions for complex problems."[1]

The creative process is natural to all of us, and in its highly optimized and systematized form, we define this process as design.

This means we have developed a method to harness the creative process, allowing us to arrive at quicker, more diverse, and refined solutions tailored to our needs.

We use this process as a method in various industries known as graphic design, industrial design, life design, service design, systems design (such as healthcare, infrastructure, political, and geopolitical systems, to name a few), business model design, design in architecture and engineering, design thinking methods....

It is about a thought process that intertwines with our subconscious, intuition, emotions, and experiences, all of which enrich our imagination and help us systematically arrive at a solution. Experiences not only encompass random events and encounters but also include insights and findings gained through observation, study, or work, contributing to the formation of our mental world and the acquisition of new knowledge.

Creativity is like a body organ with which we are all born and grows with us, this is why we can all learn the design process or become aware of it.

I was not too fond of graphic design myself. Ever since I was a child, I have been a nature and art lover, believing that design was unnatural and boring work behind a computer.

I was forced to take up graphic design, as it was one of the subjects in the study of art pedagogy that I had to complete if I wanted to graduate.

Thus, I got the opportunity to learn about design as a planned thought process intertwined with the physical activity of creating solutions, which meant more freedom in my creation. It has allowed me to enrich and see my inner landscape of information, broadening my knowledge and sparking my imagination.

"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless." Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When we hear the word information, we often think of some data, words, or numbers, that possibly bore us and we feel resistance. Still, information for us is also, for example, colors, shapes, textures, movement, sound, and smell, with which we create new mental images.

For better understanding, J. Cameron [2] in her book The Artist's Way talks about this landscape as feeding the well with our experiences. When we engage in our creation, we then draw from the well the images that have arisen through our experiences.

We all unconsciously feed our creativity well, this is how our creativity flows. But if we want to come up with innovative, optimal, effective, and unique solutions that also reflect our company and to get to them in a faster way, then we start filling our internal landscape with information more consciously and systematically. In design, this creative phase is called research - a planned acquisition of experience.

And what we need is the right questions to help us with our research. The right questions are those that inquire about our feelings, motives, goals, and visions.

It is quite often with entrepreneurs that when they start designing themselves or want to come up with some ideas for the designer, they wonder how something should look, for example, what colors or logos they should have.

This is a question we designers don't ask ourselves. At least not right at the beginning. It can limit the potential that the landscape of information has, which is that it can illustrate the unique story of our company in an innovative and unique way. You can find color combinations and shapes in this landscape that you could never imagine at first sight, this landscape can be a home to imagination without limits. Design can greatly enrich your company message.

That's why we talk about visual stories. A story is a sequence of information that we have acquired through experience and that makes sense to us. Experience in design is greatly enhanced by research. But if we want the visual story to make sense for our customers as well, we choose the information in our landscape that communicates with the customer. We are talking about visual communications.

Although in design, research can be a complex process, the foundation of how we approach it always begins with questions, which is the first step to enriching our creative well.

What do we want to achieve with the solution? What do we want to communicate or convey to the customer? Why? What kind of atmosphere do I want to create? How do I want the customer to feel? How do we want to feel about it?

These are some examples of such questions. If we know the specific case for which we are designing a solution, the questions can be more specific.

These principles can be applied when designing book covers, brochures, flyers, leaflets, logos, business cards, etc. For study purposes, which allows us a clearer demonstration of these principles, we will choose a 3D surface.

Let's look at a specific example.

For the imaginary company Marelca Ltd., we are designing the appearance of a creme tube for the product Apricot Kernel Oil Moisturizing Cream.

Note: Marelca is a Slovenian word and has two different meanings. The expression stands for apricot or small umbrella.

What do I want to achieve?

Marelca Ltd.: A label through which customers will recognize us and understand why our product is beneficial and special.

Why is this product important, why would someone buy it, what makes it special?

Marelca Ltd.: Because it is a moisturizing cream enriched with apricot oil.

Why is apricot oil important for the customer?

Marelca Ltd.: Because it contains a lot of vitamin E.

Why is vitamin E important for our customers?

Marelca Ltd.: It protects our skin from external influences.

With these answers, I now have a good arsenal of information that I can potentially include in the final design solution of the creme's label, and that will help me in making decisions on how to approach the design.

Because visual communication decorates, narrates, and identifies.

D. Kahneman [3] in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" explains two concepts: System 1 and System 2. System 1 is where we think very quickly, impulsively, and intuitively, while System 2 is where we act more thoughtfully and where certain knowledge and awareness are required.

With decoration, we create the feeling and atmosphere; with narration(explanation), we provide all the necessary information the customer needs; and with identification, we communicate who we are.

PRINCIPLE OF DECORATION

Decoration is the result of automatic impressions and feelings; it involves creating visual cues derived from our unique story and obtained through research. Decoration is typically less defined and appeals to the intuitive part.

PRINCIPLE OF IDENTIFICATION

The closer we move towards visual communication as identification, the more defined the forms become. This means a precise, agreed-upon representation of a concept, such as a company logo, various certification symbols, and declarations. A typical example of visual communication as identification from everyday life is a traffic sign.

PRINCIPLE OF NARRATION (Explanation)

Then there is narration. We can say that with decoration, we have set the scene, and with the logo, we have introduced the protagonist. Now let's add the elements that are important to our customers. This means specific words, sentences, illustrations, or photographs. And in this way, we tell them our story.

Principles are not isolated from one another; it's more about which one we will emphasize more based on the result we want to achieve.

The decisions regarding the extent to which we will incorporate principles of visual communication depend on our marketing message and the character of our brand, our style, the type of our customers, and our visual story, which of course intertwines with the choice of marketing activities, the type and size of the format (how much space we have available for all this information), and how much budget we have at our disposal.

As you can see, by using three principles, I have arrived at three different visual stories. Within each principle, by further exploring and following the steps of the design process, we could create many other unique concepts and color shades. However, once we understand this diverse set of information, the situation can become chaotic. It is necessary to narrow down the set of information with decisions.

This brings us back to the questions we asked ourselves at the beginning. Who are we as a brand, what feelings do we want to create, what do we want to communicate, what are our goals, and who are our customers?

Based on who our customers are, it is important to consider the psychological principle called cognitive ease. If some information is inaccessible to us or if we have difficulty accessing it, we will not understand it and will disregard it. The information might be important for our customers, but due to unconscious design choices, it can become too visually inaccessible for our customers. When designing visual communications, we always ensure to hierarchically highlight the information (to make it most visible) that answers the customer's subconscious questions.

As Kahneman says, "The mind is a machine for making sense." Understanding our visual story allows us to find meaning in the selection of information and increases the possibilities of unique visual creations that reflect our brand and our message.

Cover, diagram, packaging, and logo designed by Katja Vresk. Photo of the cream and cover via Unsplash.com. Photo of the apricot via Pixabay.com. Umbrella graphic via Vecteezy.com. Apricot graphic via Freepik.com. Cream tube mock-up via MockUpFREE.co.

Sources:

[1] Welch G. F., McPherson G. E. (2012). Introduction and commentary: music education and the role of music in people’s lives, in Oxford Handbook of Music Education, eds McPherson G. E., Welch F. H. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press; ), 5–20. [Google Scholar] [2] Cameron J. (2018). Umetnikova pot: osvobajanje ustvarjalnosti (The Artist's Way). Primus, Brežice [3] Kahneman D. (2019). Razmišljanje, hitro in počasno. (Thinking fast, thinking slow) Umco, Ljubljana

The author of the written theory, concepts, and graphics in this article is Katja Vresk. When using any content from this article, please cite accordingly.

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