Graphic Design & Marketing Campaigns

• Unit 1 focuses is on graphic design and crafting successful marketing campaigns for products or services.
• It emphasizes the use of design software to create logos, flyers, and animated ads that highlight promotional information.

Learning Objectives:

• Grasping the concept and significance of advertising.
• Recognizing various commercial advertising mediums.
• Understanding the attributes of an impactful advertisement.
• Comprehending graphic design principles, types, and its fundamentals.
• Identifying key elements and common forms of graphic design.
• Familiarizing with graphic design tools.
• Differentiating between vector and raster graphics.
• Recognizing the value of a logo in advertising.
• Designing logos and advertising flyers using Inkscape.
• Creating animated ads with GIMP.

Tools:

• Inkscape
• GIMP
• Microsoft Photos

Graphic Design

• It is crucial for modern marketing, aiding in logo and branding, as well as creating effective advertising materials like brochures, business cards, flyers, and banners.
• Effective graphic design enhances sales for businesses.
• Requires skilled graphic designers for creating marketing materials.
• It is a vital part of advertising design and success.

Marketing

• Marketing involves attracting potential or interested customers to a product or service.
• It covers various business aspects, including product development, advertising, sales, and distribution.
• Marketing campaigns consider product, price, place, promotion, and consumers.

Advertising

• It significantly impacts the global economy, influencing consumption and production.
• It communicates with consumers through text, audio, or visuals to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
• Primary goal is to boost sales by highlighting positive aspects, informing about prices and availability, and educating about risks of misuse.
• Advertising is a one-way communication where a sender conveys information about products, services, or ideas to a receiver to influence their decisions.

Advertising Media

• Since the 19th century, various methods have been developed to present and deliver promotions to consumers.
• Media choice depends on budget, customer reach, and preferences, helping companies reinforce brand image.

Types of Commercial Advertising Media:

Printed Media

• Includes newspapers, magazines, brochures, billboards, and signs.
• Printing is a common advertising tool due to its ability to reach specific audiences in multiple languages.
• Reach audiences with similar demographics and geographic locations through ads, branded gifts, or public transport advertising.

Online Advertising

• The internet’s growth has allowed companies to promote products through online ads.
• It involves marketing messages to attract consumers.
• With increased smart device use, online ads are crucial for businesses.
• Smartphones, tablets, and promotional messages reach target audiences via SMS, apps, and social media.
• Saudi Arabia regulates advertising signage: laws.boe.gov.sa/BoeLaws/Laws/LawDetails/16c49913-599f-406b-b016-a9a700f172c9/1
• Regulations cover advertising boards, responsible parties, fees, lease terms, and company responsibilities.

Effective Advertising Attributes:

Good Headline Selection

• Carefully chosen words are essential for attracting reader attention, focusing on product features, addressing audience concerns, and sparking curiosity.

Request Action from Recipient

• Encourages receiver engagement through techniques like "Call to Action," common in sales and electronic ads.
• Includes prompts like button clicks linking users to a brand's website.

Display Credibility

• Advertisers must establish credibility with third-party endorsements, official approvals, or user reviews.

Focus on What the Product Offers the Consumer

• Consumers focus on personal benefits, so ads must highlight how the product improves daily life.

Include Relevant Graphic Information

• Provide product availability details, contact methods, and website or social media information in ads.

Graphic Design Types:

• Graphic design uses images, drawings, symbols, and text to convey information visually.

Visual Identity Design

• Used in marketing for branding, enhancing values through images, shapes, and colors that highlight business identity.

Marketing and Advertising Design

• Used to promote products or services via social media graphics, magazine ads, billboards, brochures, email marketing templates, and content marketing.

Publication Design

• Traditionally for print, now includes digital publishing, with designers working with editors to optimize layout, illustrations in books, newspapers, and magazines.

Product Packaging Design

• Preparing products for sale requires packaging, labels, and visual elements.

Motion Design

• A graphic design branch applying motion effects, including video games, animations, apps, GIFs, and website elements.

Web Page Design

• Combines layout, images, and typography for user-friendly and visually appealing websites.

Graphic Design Principles:

• These principles guide designers in planning and arranging elements to achieve a cohesive and impactful message, including:

Balance

• Achieves visual harmony through symmetrical or asymmetrical arrangements, providing stability.

Alignment

• Aligns design elements to the top, bottom, center, or sides to create visual connections.

Proximity

• Establishes visual relationships between elements, reducing distractions, increasing understanding, and providing focus.

Repetition

• Repeating elements creates unity and consistency.

Contrast

• Emphasizes certain design aspects by highlighting differences.

Elements of Graphic Design:

• These are fundamental units for visual communication including:

Line

• Can be curved, straight, thick, thin, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional.

Shape

• A defined two-dimensional area created by lines, geometric or abstract.

Color

• Attracts attention with hue, value, and saturation.

Typography

• Arranging fonts in various sizes, colors, and spacings to impact the message.

Texture

• Surface quality that can be rough, smooth, shiny, or matte.

Size

• Varying element sizes to provide visual interest.

Space

• Empty areas that prevent clutter, including distances between elements.

Graphic Design Forms Include:

User Experience (UX) Design

• Focuses on how things work together and user interaction, enhancing product usability effectively.
• Example: An easily navigable online store.

User Interface (UI) Design

• Concentrates on aesthetics and layout, ensuring easy access to website functions.
• Example: Well chosen colors on an e-commerce site.

Graphic Design Tools

• Software applications crucial for creating images, typography, and layouts.

Paid Graphic Design Programs:

Adobe Photoshop:

• Offers superior image editing capabilities.

Adobe InDesign:

• Used for publishing with capabilities for magazine and document design.

CorelDraw:

• Features an intuitive interface with professional editing capabilities.

Adobe Illustrator:

• Ideal for illustrative artwork, page layouts, logos, and promotional materials using vector-based graphics.

Affinity Designer:

• Is a substitute for Adobe Illustrator offering performance and features.

Xara Designer Pro X:

• Offers advanced design and layout capabilities for illustrations, photo editing, and web design.

Free Graphic Design Programs:

Genially:

• Turns content into professional-looking art suitable for websites and social media.

GIMP:

• An open-source program that offers features similar to Photoshop.

Gravit Designer:

• A tool for professionals involving vector graphics, products, and web designs.

Photoscape:

• Used for graphics by beginners and professionals, offering features for image editing.

Vectr:

• Creates vector designs, edits photos, and customizes projects, also provides a Chrome extension.

Inkscape:

• Allows designers to create flexible designs that maintain quality.

Differentiating Vector and Raster Graphics:

Vector Graphics:

• Maintain quality upon resizing.
• Easily scalable without quality loss.
• Filled usually with one or gradient color.
• Small file sizes even with large dimensions.
• Easily convertible to raster.

Raster Graphics:

• Best for detailed and rich images.
• Quality decreases when resized.
• Editing capabilities and blending are optimal.
• Larger file sizes.
• Conversion to vector involves time.
• Common format for images.

Logo Importance in Advertising

• A logo uses a symbol, mark to promote and help with company identity, with designs that are abstract, containing company name/mark.
• Choosing logo type will influence product advertising, helps with how customers perceive the business mark.

Logo Types:

Wordmark Logo

• Uses company or product name, is relevant to companies with interesting names.

Lettermark Logo

• Relies on initials/acronym and it's also suited for organizations having longer and hard to pronounce names.

Image Logo

• Composed of a vector based image thats serving as a trademark that is nice to companies targeting kids or families, its colour must be more important so needs to be much more attractive.

Combination Logo

• Merges text and images that is easy to remember, often a complex requirement.

• It is essential with the institute/organization to design to a logo professionally as it will be an identification means.

• Plays vital role as an identification means, and plays vital role as link between companies.