The Rationale for Professional Design
“Why?” A question most
organizations will ask themselves before making an investment
in professional design. After all, the expertise it takes to provide
high quality graphic design services is not a hard product—it
has no immediate weight or dimensions. Its purpose is to provide
monetary results, which can be quantified, but they’re in
the future. So, why do something now?
Essentially, great professional design used
in concert with a client’s excellent products and services
will positively impact their bottom-line. At worst, not using
professional design services can negatively affect bottom-line,
and even at best, doing nothing will leave it unchanged. We know
that in today’s economy, every organization needs to be
spending cautious, but we also know that not a single one of them
can afford to lose ground or just keep the status quo.
Those things in themselves are reasons enough
for investing in professional graphic design. There’s more
to it, however, and at Morningstar Design, Inc.
we detail for our existing clients and prospects our unique approach
and the specialized ways we address their individual problems
and opportunities. Here, at Morningstar, we believe
there are four objectives of high quality design. Our dedication
and success in meeting them represents the true value of professional
design, and the added value of our personal services.
They are:
Communication
First and foremost, good graphic design is
about communication. It is a succinct visual statement of an organization’s
mission, a clearly illustrated announcement of its products and
services, a sharp picture testimony of the benefits they offer.
Likewise, it should generate two responses: growth and profit.
Today’s marketing world is full of clamoring
pop-ups—graphic clutter in every media—often with
unintelligible messages. Quality graphic design, however, will
articulate an organization’s diverse messages so they can
be understood. If a picture can speak a thousand words, a communications
design will do the same, but far more concisely.
At Morningstar Design, it
is not about styles and trends; it’s about substance and
distinction—a commercial imperative for every organization’s
success. Our skilled and creative efforts give an organization
a voice. We get our clients heard.
Image
We also know that good graphic design is about
image building. The advantage is comparable to an individual developing
a strong, attractive personality. For a business, having a personality,
or image, that is highly regarded by the public and within its
industry is one of the most important properties it can possess.
It makes a business popular. Supported by quality products and
service, popular translates to successful.
No matter what your specific market, you can be sure it’s
in a visually oriented, fast-paced, competitive world, and you
need to be seen. Obviously, a weak image has to be strengthened,
but it is equally important to continually reinforce a positive
one. To ignore either is to leave a positioning vacuum quickly
filled by competitors. Being constantly attentive to image building
and enhancement is a key way for smaller organizations to become
bigger ones, and for bigger ones to stay that way.
We, at Morningstar Design,
know that developing and maintaining image is a business function
much too important to leave to just anyone. So, we offer high-end
talent and long-term experience to create exceptional visual identities.
We get our clients seen—we make them popular.
Cost Effectiveness
As with any expert professional service—yours
or ours—the work does not come cheap. But cost should not
be confused with value. “You get what you pay for.”
may be a cliché, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
Viewed from a bottom-line perspective, a minimal additional investment
in superior design quality can maximize a return, making it well
worth the initial output.
In general, except for the very smallest of
jobs, any design fees are a fraction of total cost (printing,
media, etc., represent the major portion). Specifically, when
evaluating the cost effectiveness of using a firm the caliber
of Morningstar Design, consider the industry
facts: the incremental difference of opting for outstanding design
versus a mediocre equivalent typically only increases costs 5%
to 7% on a small brochure or ad, or less than 1% on an annual
report.
Understand that when contracting for graphic
design, most of the cost will be for conceptualization and time.
All truly good design begins with a great idea and the best of
creative and artistic abilities to present it. Primarily, design
time is cerebral in nature, based on talent, training, and experience.
In superior design, this involved process will not vary greatly
from client to client because to provide consistently top notch
results, a top quality design firm must be consistent in its efforts—with
no scaling down or shortcutting. Often, the difference between
the costs of professional design jobs is in the quality of time
provided by one firm versus another. At some point, that difference
will be read on a bottom-line proving “You get what
you pay for.” is the truth.
Each hour dedicated to a contract at
Morningstar Design is vital to a client’s return
on investment, and so our team members give it all that they have—bringing
their individual specialties to the table. We are paid for what
we do, because we get our clients to profit.
Flexibility
The business world and its markets are always
changing—the speed of change increasing daily with computers.
It takes a certain willingness and financial commitment to keep
up with technological advancements and the competition—it
takes flexibility. In the field of professional graphic design,
that flexibility is essential in order to provide clients with
the best means to keep up in their own quickly shifting worlds.
New publishing software is a tremendous help,
but it has a price. A quality graphic design firm must incur the
initial costs of time and money to stay current so that their
clients can remain so. Quality design is a complicated process,
and technology is just a part of it. Basically, it is still what
it has always been—a solution to an organization’s
needs. Computers and software are the New Age tools, but they
are only as good as the people who use them. A good design team
has to be flexible. They must constantly be learning new skills
and incorporating them into their repertoire so they can continue
to meet the fluid needs of their clients.
At Morningstar Design, we
are continuously researching and updating, changing ourselves
in order to offer innovative options so that any organization
can grow with the times. We get our clients to compete
in today’s world.
We have faith in these goals because we know
from experience that our ability to meet them brings success to
our clients. We are excited by the possibility of making your
organization more successful through quality graphic design. So,
if you are asking, “Why use professional design?”
think about what Louis Armstrong said when asked to define jazz:
“You’ll know it when you hear it.” It’s
the same thing with good design—you either get it or you
don’t, and all else is either noise or silence. Either way,
no one will listen.
If your next question is, “Why use
Morningstar Design, Inc.?” Consider
what another great jazz musician, Duke Ellington, once said, “It
is not the piano that makes great music, it is the person sitting
at the piano.” Apply that to graphic design, and you
can expect the Morningstar Design staff to be
sitting at their keyboards—creating great ideas and designs
for you.
Now ask yourself, “Can we afford
not to?”
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