You have come up with a good creative concept, an attention grabbing headline and a convincing copy. You also have an idea of the desired number of colour printing as well as the type of printing involved. Now it’s time to design the advertising and promotional material in order to give it a visual effect. A good design will use appropriate design indicators which will help the target audience to grasp the message in a manner that the writer intended it to be conveyed. An improper design will send confused signals which will hinder the reader in understanding the message irrespective of the medium. Whether you’re creating a business card, letterhead, brochure, advertisement or a newsletter, effective design can sell your ideas by making them easier to understand.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. As such, it is difficult to establish any hard and fast rules for composition and design. They could also tend to be restrictive for the creative process. However, some basic principles, conventions and guidelines can be established which can serve as a starting point to assist visualisers / designers in developing a good visual layout. These will also assist designers to prevent themselves from committing the mistakes that others have made before them. In addition, these will also help the advertising and marketing executives to critically review the work of their advertising agencies and ensure high quality of design.

The appearance of your print communications directly influences your ability to inform, motivate and persuade. Here’s why. Just as you form impressions about people when you first meet them based on their posture, clothing, facial expressions and voice tone, readers judge your ideas based on the first impression created by your advertising and promotional material. If the document is cluttered or disorganised, readers are likely to disregard your ideas–no matter how brilliant they are.

Designing is all about using the different design elements to project the right visual signals to effectively convey the message to the target audience. It is a well established fact that we tend to ignore the messages that we don’t want to receive in printed material. Similarly, we also unconsciously tune out some visual signals while absorbing and responding to others. A news story splashed on the front page of your daily newspaper tells you that this is the most important story without being specifically told that it is. So while visual signals can be very subtle, their impact on the understanding of the message on the reader can be critical. Clear and appropriate signals assist in the smoother transfer of the message to the reader’s mind. On the other hand, misleading signals can be a handicap.

The steps involved in designing are as follows:

First, very rough sketches using very basic elements of the concept called thumbnails are made. This is usually done during the brainstorming stages. This is a stimulating process as it gets the creative juices flowing.

After the ideas have been firmed up, detailed sketches of the layout or the composition are prepared. At this stage, one knows the visuals that are going to be used, the colour scheme, the fonts as well as an idea of the size of the advertising and promotional material.

With the help of the detailed layout and supervision of the art director/ visualiser the computer operator prepares the design.