Every business exists to serve some purpose. Shoemakers? Well that one’s obvious. Engineers, doctors, lawyers, plumbers, they all perform tasks that we need at various points in our lives. Their specific skills have a purpose. That purpose adds quality to our lives in different ways. We might be safer in a building, we might live healthier or longer lives, we might be protected from other people’s actions or greed, or we might need help fixing up after flood from a leaky pipe. But after working in this industry for 30+ years I find that the purpose of graphic marketing is not always clearly understood.

This lack of clarity may come from the fact that this industry is changing and is an ever-broadening field, one that has grown to include not only advertising and branding but social media, Internet experiences, application development, and a whole host of other tactics and technologies. Through the wide list of possible applications of graphic marketing, the purpose stays the same. That purpose is to increase and improve a business. My initial thought, was to say that the purpose is to make a business more profitable. But the truth is, that although most businesses prefer increased profit, there are cases where an organization wants greater notoriety, increased brand exposure, or to possibly correct the bad media exposure. In the end, it’s about modifying people’s beliefs about a business, and as a result, their actions.

The phrase “target market” is often used for the people whose actions we wish to affect. This group has specific characteristics, likes, dislikes, ages, genders and a whole list of other experiences and attitudes. For example, somebody looking for a financial advisor (I have a very good one by the way. Feel free to ask me about them.) Is very different from somebody looking for a restaurant, or a programmer, or any number of other industries. Sometimes a target market is very large with a wide variety of people (Coca Cola’s target audience for example is… well… everybody who is currently… living), other times it can be a very narrow “nitch” market. But either way, the goal is to affect their thinking, and then their actions. These desired actions could be as simple as to buy a product, or something less tangible and intermediate like to refer company to an associate, to increase recognition for possible future sales, to motivate someone to go to a website, or simply to gain a better “feeling” about a company or service.

This is where professional, experienced, or “good” graphic marketer will step in and begin to learn about the specific goals of a product or company. These goals and the information about the company, the product and the target audience then enter the creative process where the past experiences of the graphic marketer, their design knowledge and their understanding of the visual tools come together. It’s a custom-built creation with the purpose of affecting people’s beliefs and actions. It ‘s a commissioned service for a company to help them reach their goals.

If there was no need for graphic marketing a restaurant could put a sign out front in black type (Helvetica regular of course) simply saying “good food”. There actually was a time in our history when that was good enough, although you have to go back a century or two to have that experience. Of course this was before Helvetica was created but you get the idea. Like so many things as our society evolves, competition has resulted in the fine-tuning of skills and expertise… and expectations. Graphic marketing is no different. The bar is higher. The need is greater. Effectively positioning a business, product or service in this competitive environment is the purpose of graphic marketing. By doing this we reach the ultimate purpose, business success.

In future issues I’ll be exploring the depths of the context that designers need to think and work. But as a very short preview, every aspect of good design exists in a context of what is around the design work. Technology, color, client “personality, products, typography, visual hierarchy and many other aspects all contribute to the decisions of successful design.