It’s easy to think of your brand as a static entity, made up of various visual elements, ideas, and words. However, your brand is ultimately a tool for expression, as well as a medium for engaging and converting your potential customers. It’s both your organization’s language and framework for sharing your message. When your brand is refined and aligned with your audience’s interests, you’re more likely to communicate with them effectively.
Strategic design complements your copywriting in your overall brand presence. It expresses what words cannot. And in some cases, it even opens the door to a stronger relationship between your company and your customers or clients.
The key to fully leveraging design is to understand it as an experience rather than an aesthetic.
Design’s Effect on Cultural and Societal Experiences
Our hominid ancestors relied on spoken language to communicate. When they needed to transcend the boundaries of space and time, they created paintings on cave walls or carved shapes out of rock and bone. For most of human history, we have been overwhelmingly visual and oral. The written word was unheard of, and even after it emerged, it was many more millennia before it became codified and highly distributable through print media. And it wasn’t until the 19th century that images could also be easily reproduced and disseminated.
By that point, communication had evolved from direct, centralized information transfer to a broad network of overlapping messages, both original and recycled. Media theorist and historian Marshall McLuhan explains in his book Understanding Media that was essentially a shift from flat, Newton physics and Euclidean geometry to three-dimensional, Einsteinian physics and non-Euclidean geometry: structures that shape how we perceive shapes.
McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” referring to media’s ability to express cultural, nonverbal information beyond the actual content. He notes, “People used to ask what a painting was about. Yet they never thought to ask what a melody was about, nor what a house or a dress was about” (McLuhan, 1964,p. 28). In this digital age, though, people interpret all audiovisual data as the message, and our expectation of uniform, objective, and immersive information leads us to prefer visual communication as a source of truth.
In Western society, most people are literate. However, when the printing press was invented, only the upper class could read. Because visual reproduction was limited to typography, the masses were not missing out on much. As literacy rose, though, and it became possible to mass-distribute both images and text, demand surged for printed materials. Today, literacy and visual perception go hand in hand. And as the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Yet there remains a division between words and images. While the oft-cited statistic that humans process visuals faster than text is a myth, there are clearly differences in how we respond to images versus reading or listening to words.
For organizations, that presents a challenge, as people can’t absorb verbal information without certain skills. A study published in a peer-reviewed medical journal may be full of information, but its audience must know all the lingo and core principles to process it.
Similarly, a long list of product benefits may seem dreary or arrogant, while a short video or infographic can help the customer visualize those benefits. That’s a perfect example of how “the medium is the message.”
Why Visuals Make a Stronger Impact
There is evidence for the pictorial effect, which describes humans’ ability to rapidly absorb (and prefer) visual information. In as few as 13 milliseconds, our brains can accurately identify images. That demonstrates the prevalence of “feedforward processing,” in which information is funneled directly from the sensory organs to the brain. By contrast, reading or listening to a verbal description must first send the visual perception through our brains’ language centers.
Visuals are also a core component of our brains’ “iconic memory,” which correlates our perception for a cohesive sense of reality. It’s how we track complex shapes, sounds, and smells to navigate the world – and often, tune out irrelevant information. If you’ve ever gone on “autopilot” while driving home from the office, you’ve experienced the effects of iconic memory.
Altogether ,these scientific principles show that humans are highly receptive to visual information. We can’t help but absorb it, which is why design is crucial to messaging. What’s more likely to make you hungry: a description of a delicious burger or a picture of a burger with a juicy patty, a luscious tomato, sesame-sprinkled bun, and supple cheese melting down the sides?
You probably know the answer — and our apologies for making you salivate.
Leveraging Design in Visual Communication
We’ve all seen companies whose advertising copy didn’t match their visuals or values (or vice versa). Design isn’t just about looking pretty. As the medium is the message, all visuals must create the emotional and psychological experience your audience expects.
Here’s an example from the world of project management apps. This ever-growing industry has fierce competition — and very similar features from company to company. While beauty or fitness brands could rely on their aesthetic for differentiation, these companies cannot. So instead, they leverage the power of strategic design to illustrate their benefits.
Trello combines colorful illustrations with tons of negative space. The blue, purple, and orange hues connote friendliness, energy, and power. A welcoming sans-serif typeface and roomy layout provide a feeling of openness and comfort, as well as a sense of efficiency.
By contrast, Asana utilizes photographs and a plain black-and-white palette, suggesting its emphasis on real-world solutions and a professional aesthetic. Its layout is more complex, suggesting that the platform offers advanced workflows and a detailed interface.
Neither approach is wrong. We can see that Trello is clearly targeting aspirational teams who want a simple, user-friendly solution, while Asana is more geared toward large organizations that need innovative, professional project management features.
So, what does all this mean for your brand’s communication?
Design is Your Brand Language
If your tone of voice is your vocabulary, your design is the content: how you express your organization’s key messages through a visual experience. Consider the connotations of your design elements: are they widely spaced or compact? Colorful or neutral? Flowing or highly structured? Natural or stylized? All those characteristics create an experience for your target audience.
Moreover, they intersect with your verbal content. A snappy, conversational script fits well with a rapid-fire, slick video, while a verbose, formal script will seem misaligned. A set of beautiful, naturally lit photos pairs well with aspirational copy, while ultra-salesy language may seem insincere.
In conclusion, it’s crucial to pin down your brand’s communicative style, and that goes beyond aesthetic or tone of voice alone. When you perceive design as a communication strategy, it’s easier to leverage its messaging power — because you understand that the medium itself is the true message.
References:
McLuhan,M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (2nded.). Signet Books.
