I recently came across an interesting discussion on Linkedin regarding effective graphic design. The original post was called, “Creating a Graphic Design Piece that Sells”. It was written by a person who was promoting a direct marketing firm. The article stated, “Here’s what all great pieces have in common: Use one dominant element per page; minimize typeface variety; utilize white space; use informational graphics where appropriate; and make the logo visible.”

 My instinctive response was to question whether effective design could be reduced to a simple standardized formula? Isn’t all good design based on specific criteria?

No sooner than I had thought this, than another group member posted this reply: “This approach assumes that design is to be judged on some standard of design, independent of anything else. First comes an objective in regard to marketing materials. Marketing establishes an objective (or objectives) and develops a strategy to realize those objectives. Design not only does not perform independent of these things, but to be successful, it must assume that marketing did their job correctly and visually enable the strategy to effectively work, to realize the objectives. Good commercial design (i.e. graphic design) when done well is a measurement of how well marketing did their job.”

This designer’s thoughts were similar to my own, however I believe there’s even a little more to it. Criteria is the foundation of effective design and includes more than just objectives and strategy. It includes things like a thorough understanding of who your audience is, how they are unique, where they are, what they do and what their passions are. It includes understanding attributes, benefits, strengths and weaknesses of the brand. A study of com

petition, how to stand out… and much more. The designer should help contribute and synthesize all this in the design process.

I think more thought leaders (CEO’s, CMO’s, CTO’s), are recognizing the rich benefits of seamless collaboration between disciplines and “departments”. I believe it is critically important that marketers understand design methodology and that designers be actively engaged in criteria development from the start- not sitting and waiting for the next “order”. How can you achieve full creative potential with an assembly-line mentality? You can’t.

The same holds true for interaction between web designers, programmers, PR, strategists, media planners, writers, etc. Here at Renaissance we are about seamless collaboration. Our designers are intelligent, strategic thinkers who have a broad range of individual capabilities. And we use all of them to achieve the best results for our clients.

Many years ago, legendary ad man, William Bernbach had the vision to combine copywriters and art directors into two-person teams—they had commonly been in separate departments. So, why did we ever stop there? Fragmenting the brand internally will inherently, weaken it externally. The bottom line is that the more diversified skill sets you put on a problem from the onset, the better your chance of arriving at an effective solution. In my opinion, this is one “general” principle of design that if utilized uniformly, would allow us to say with conviction, “Here’s what all great pieces really have in common”.