Resist Advertising Your Business with Homemade Graphic Design

To save money, owners of small businesses will create their own promotional materials. It's unfortunate because, quite frankly, most don't know what they're doing and neither do their secretaries, wives or sisters. Cutting this corner will unintentionally send the wrong message to potential clients.

People with no graphic design training, armed with a digital camera, cheap desktop publishing software and a gritty do-it-yourself attitude, will come up with what my design professor, Mary Ellen McFadden, lovingly called, "people's graphics."

These flyers, brochures, business cards and other printed advertising materials are characterized by things like bad alignment, hard to read print, confusing or misspelled copy, muddy or stretched out pictures and bad paper. This is not the place to assert your survivalist, can-do, attitude because people's graphics send negative messages about your capability to do what you are actually promoting.

How many chances do you have to make a good first impression? There is only one. Along with the main messages about your business - contact information and why somebody should call you - promotional materials communicate subliminally. These behind the scenes impressions are known as 'meta communication,' and they leave a strong impact on the observer.

The sole purpose of advertising is to inform people that you're the one for the job, but no matter how great you are at what you do, people's graphics send subliminal messages that your attention to detail, choice of materials and workmanship is sloppy.

If you are determined to produce these things yourself get training, but expect it to be time consuming. Along with basic design principles you will need to write effective copy, shoot and optimize photos, research paper, find a good printer, and do it all well.

If you don't have time to take classes, at least ask a trained professional or two to critique your work. Horrifying as this may sound, you will be doing your business a favor. Peer critique is an important component of all artist, designer and writer training and it is highly valued because it leads to improvement. If your work is not critiqued you can expect it to be criticized.