Graphic Design for
Lawyers
If you think that getting a few pictures of gavels and the scales of justice is good enough in regards to design for a law firm, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful visual tools there is.
In today’s digital world filled with screens, and the physical world with billboards and all other types of advertising, design is more important than ever before.
Graphic design for lawyers and law firms can be the difference between building trust and authority, or losing out on leads because your firm looks unprofessional or cookie-cutter.
Oftentimes, the difference between fantastic design or something lackluster is in the small details. Just like in the courtroom, the small details can make or break you.
It’s a matter of fully harnessing the power of design without overdoing it. There are certain expectations that people have when they imagine how a law firm should “look” and “feel” visually.
For example, if a lawyer’s website had bright neon colors and an 80’s retro aesthetic, that would just look off. On the other hand, it’s good to stand out a bit from the crowd, but it has to be done tactfully.
It comes down to finding an experienced designer who has done work for layers in the past, knows the nuance, and knows how to make their designs really shine while still fitting within the professional and authoritative framework that you want to convey.
If you reach out to freelance designers with a law firm email address, or ask them for graphic design for lawyers in general, they’re probably going to start seeing dollar signs. This is often true for many fields outside of design including marketing, SEO agencies for lawyers, and even contractors and other trades.
This makes sense because it’s important, high-impact work that requires a certain level of expertise. But having a designer inflate their price doesn’t mean you’re going to get a higher level of work.
At Graphically, we offer unlimited graphic design services for all sorts of businesses and individuals, and we offer a flat rate that’s the same for everyone. Whether you’re a top lawyer or you’re running a lemonade stand on the weekend, we’ll take care of your graphic design needs and treat you fairly.
Besides having to be careful when you shop around to avoid subpar designers inflating their prices, there are some other reasons that hiring designers can be a challenge for lawyers.
Finding a designer, auditioning a handful of the best candidates, and choosing the best one can be a time-consuming process. If you post a job listing and get 50 applications, how are you going to filter them without spending all day on it?
Then there’s interviewing the shortlist, and ultimately choosing someone to hire, and if they find a better gig, you’re back to square one and chances are your next designer will have their own style that might not perfectly match what you’ve had done thus far.
There’s so much more to design than just looking at something and thinking, “that looks good enough!” That’s part of it, for sure. Most of the potential clients who see your branding are not going to be professional designers who can carefully scrutinize it, but there’s a massive crater between amateur design and professional design.
Do you ever laugh when you hear laymen talking about the law while being so incorrect about their perceptions of different things? It’s understandable, most professionals feel that way when they hear people talking about their areas of expertise.
Design is no different. Someone without any training or experience in design can still have a good eye for things, but they’re going to struggle with what makes a particular design “good” or not, and how different designs can suit projects differently.
Something might look good for one business or project, while still missing out on the specific traits that make great graphic design for lawyers.
This ties in with the fact that hiring a designer can take a lot of time. Even after you’ve found someone, you’ll still need to manage them. Are you going to pay them a retainer? A flat rate per design project? A salary? How are you going to keep track of everything? It can be an absolute hassle.
Before the end of the page, we’ll present our solution to you, and how we’ve managed to solve all of the aforementioned challenges in order to save you time, save you hassle, and to allow you to lean on our years of expertise and experience in design.
You might be sitting there thinking that you already have a logo, a business card, a simple website, what else do you need? Well, the answer is that there’s a lot more to it than that.
Firstly, all of the various visual aspects should tie in together. Design should have a clear goal and a path towards accomplishing that goal, and every visual element from a logo, a business card, a banner ad, and anything else should keep the design language in mind.
Here are some of the aspects of graphic design for lawyers that play a huge role in the overall cohesiveness of the message you’re putting out there visually and how it represents a lawyer or a law firm.
The psychology of color plays a significant role in choosing a color scheme for a law firm. What do you want to portray?
Color schemes based around blue help portray a sense of calmness and trust. It’s common to see law firms who use steel blue or other muted blues that have a hint of gray to them.
Red can give a feeling of power, professionalism, and tradition. A deep, strong red is another common choice to see in graphic design for lawyers.
Going beyond just the color scheme, a design language is essentially the building blocks of a brand’s visual identity. It can incorporate any piece of visual media associated with a lawyer, but it can also stretch beyond that into the design of their office, lobby, and so on.
A cohesive design language can cover things like the website, the logo, letterhead, but also the actual office space and interior design choices.
There are certain messages that a lawyer wants to get across to their potential (and current) clients, in addition to other lawyers they may be up against in court or during negotiations.
There are certain expectations in terms of professionalism and the image that a lawyer wants to portray, and then there’s also some wiggle room where a talented designer can put their own touch on it to stand out from the crowd while also signaling things like trust, authority, diligence, competence, and justice.
Not sure exactly how much lawyers can benefit from great graphic design? Here are just a few examples of the public-facing graphics that lawyers can lean on to build their brand, display their authority, and convey the right message to their clients.
Many clients will find you via your website, and even the ones that don’t find you via your website will still probably check it out while they’re researching different lawyers and shopping around to see their different options.
If your site looks bad, that’s a poor first impression. If your site matches the rest of your branding and the image you’re putting out, it’s a big advantage. It doesn’t take long for your branding to start to look familiar, and there’s a lot of value in that.
A nice logo is another example of a way that nearly every law firm uses branding and design. Sometimes, it’s a very simple logo just based around plain text, and other times a lawyer’s logo will have some sort of icon or illustration. Logos for lawyers are often bold, strong, and powerful.
Even in the digital age, it can still be useful to have a business card. The difference is that today’s business cards don’t just have a phone number on them, they’ll also have a website, social media accounts, and other points of access where potential clients can learn more about your services, your areas of expertise, and why they should retain your services.
If you run a social media profile, it’s important to have a cohesive style that follows throughout your posts. On platforms like Facebook and Instagram that are very visual, people might take a look at your profile to make sure you’re legitimate and real as they quickly scroll through your posts.
The posts themselves aren’t necessarily meant to go viral or draw in a ton of leads (but if course you could focus more on social media for marketing if that’s your strategy), it’s just one of the many ways to reinforce your branding and have a consistent image for anyone that might check it out while doing their research and looking for a lawyer to hire.
Advertisements are one area where you might test out some different styles and designs and stray a bit from your brand’s typical design language. Ads should be tailored to perform on the platform on which they’re displayed, but they should still have elements that tie into the rest of your design.
We created Graphically to help professionals, businesses, organizations, and all types of projects to achieve top-tier graphic design without all of the typical hurdles that come along with hiring a designer.
Our team of designers are experienced in graphic design for lawyers.
We can take your existing designs and improve upon them or we can start from scratch to create a cohesive identity for your practice and your personal branding.
