Graphic Design for
Publishers
Content creators and publishers tend to understand the importance of visuals and graphic design a lot better than other industries do. There are many different types of publishers.
Historically, a publisher would simply release books or newspapers, however, this term can cover anything from content creators, bloggers, webmasters, and much more.
This means that anyone who publishes content on the internet is now a publisher. The barriers to entry have never been lower, which is great for anyone who wants to become a publisher, but it also means that there are a lot of publishers out there who don’t quite have everything figured out and can use a hand, especially as it relates to images and graphic design.
Even if you publish a blog that’s mostly text-based, having great graphics is crucial. Even if you run a YouTube channel where you’re sitting in front of the camera talking, having great graphics is crucial. Even if you publish a podcast, having great graphics is crucial. Why? Here’s why…
If you publish something that’s audio or text based, or a simple video format, the images and visuals still set the first impression.
Take a webpage, for example. If you land on a website and there’s no images at all, it just looks like a giant wall of text and it’s not going to be as appealing to read. Oftentimes, an article or a blog post can be enhanced by using images to help represent or explain different ideas from within the text.
The featured image of your blog posts or website articles are going to be what people see first when your content is shared to social media. Using plain stock images isn’t good enough if you want to give your content its best chance at reaching a wider audience.
On YouTube, the thumbnail is vitally important for attracting attention. The title and thumbnail are the only things that a potential viewer has to work with when deciding to click your video or not. Once they click, having some nice graphics within the edited video can be helpful in viewer retention and getting your information across, but using the default YouTube thumbnail is usually a very bad idea.
But what about podcasts? Why do podcast publishers need graphic design? For the same reasons as anyone else. When people are browsing for podcasts to listen to, they’re going to see your logo and any associated design elements. If you have a website for your podcast, the style and design matter there, too.
So, even in mediums that aren’t necessarily visual or don’t seem like graphic design would be important, it still plays a big role in getting attention for the media that you’re publishing.
And beyond that, there’s all of the countless other mediums that are primarily visual, such as social media posts, advertisements, and more.
When you think of more traditional types of publishers, like old media, newspapers, books, and so on, they have understood the importance of graphic design for ages. The internet opens up the doors for all sorts of new publishers, but it seems like some of the old lessons need to be re-learned.
Most websites, podcasts, and so on will have images and graphics, but it’s not enough to simply toss in a stock photo and call it a day.
Taking advantage of thoughtful and strategic graphic design can take your publishing business to the next level and is an immediate way to elevate you above your competitors.
Even though visual media is an important part of publishing, many publishers still struggle with it. It’s simply not their main focus a lot of the time. Publishers are focused on their main content, and can neglect tangential things like graphics and design, even if those elements play such an important role.
Sometimes, publishers just don’t have “the eye” for graphic design, so they’ll stick with boring stock images or subpar graphics just to use as filler. Even if they know they need images, they might just not put enough effort into using the perfect images for their content.
This isn’t always the case, of course, as many publishers recognize and take advantage of graphic design.
But even if you know you need it, it’s still another hurdle when you’re trying to focus on your main content.
That’s where hiring a graphic designer can help lighten the load, but it also brings with it a whole new set of challenges, such as:
You can hire a designer full time, or find a freelancer who will work on your project when they have time. In any case, it either ends up costing a small fortune and taking up a lot of your time, or you end up with designers that aren’t doing much better than you’d be able to put together on your own.
There’s a better option, though, and that’s a subscription design service like Graphically. We offer unlimited graphic design on a monthly subscription that makes it easy for publishers to up their graphics game with a minimal investment in both time and money.
What we’ve created is simply a better way to get graphics for your publishing business, regardless of which types of content you publish.
At Graphically, we can help publishers elevate their graphic design while also lightening the workload. Here are just some of the ways that we can help you solve the problems outlined above, while unlocking the full potential of your publishing business.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, since we’ve discussed this a lot on our blog, it’s so important to have a consistent design language. That means using the same fonts, the same color schemes, and the same overall aesthetic across all of your brand’s design.
Why does this matter? It matters because it creates a sense of familiarity which can build trust, and it generally just looks a lot better than if you had a bunch of different people doing your designs and they all come out looking differently.
This is a major benefit of working with the same designer or team on an on-going basis, instead of hiring different freelancers for each design task you have.
Some publishers create their own content and others outsource it. For some, the goal is to start by creating all of the content themselves, building a platform, and ultimately being able to outsource a lot of the content creation. In any case, graphic design should be a sizable portion of your output, even if it’s not your main focus (for example, blog posts, podcasts, etc).
Nonetheless, hiring a designer can be very costly. A professional designer who works on your project as their main focus is essentially a full time salary that you’re adding into the mix, and you might not have enough work for them to justify that expense. Otherwise, you could be one of their smaller clients and end up waiting a long time, which is difficult if you’re on a tight publishing schedule.
If you’re currently paying designers a la carte for each small project they do, you could be paying a big premium and missing out on a lot of the benefits that we can offer with our subscription service.
This is the big one. It’s just so time consuming to hire and manage a team of designers, or even an individual designer. There is an easier way, and we’ve built it.
We went through all of the work of hiring, training, and maintaining an amazing team of designers and for a surprisingly low monthly membership fee, you can have full access to them for all of your design needs.
Some publishers need more design work than others do, and we’ve accounted for that by offering two different membership levels. The standard plan gives you access to one design task at a time, and our premium plan means you can have 3 unique projects being worked on by our designers at any given moment.
As outlined above, you’ll have full access to our experienced team of designers who have worked extensively with all types of publishers over the years.
Allow us a moment to brag about our team because we’re very proud of them. Unlike most of our competitors who function as middle-men connecting freelance designers to clients and taking a big cut, we actually employ our designers. They work for us and that means we’ve invested a lot more into training them, building out the infrastructure to help them serve you, and creating a company culture that puts our clients first.
We have a much lower turnover of our designers, which means that you don’t have to worry about consistency in our designs.
We strongly encourage collaboration, which means that all of our designers actively work to help eachother out, so everyone just gets better and better the longer they’re with us.
We found all the ways in which our competitors fell short, and we put in the work to improve upon those aspects, resulting in an unlimited graphic design subscription service powered by the best team of designers in the business.
This means you can skip the tedious work of building your own team, or even trying to find one great designer, because we’ve already done all of that for you at a price that simply can’t be beat.
When you sign up for Graphically, you’re getting the best design team at the best price because we’ve brought it all in-house, giving you the advantages of having your own on-demand team of designers without the high overhead or massive time investments.
You’re able to communicate with your designer throughout the process, which is incredibly helpful when you’re collaborating with them on design work. You can choose to be as hands-on or hands-off as you’d like.
If your marketing agency already uses Slack, you can work with your designer directly in Slack instead of using our custom-built client portal. This is very convenient if your agency is already using Slack for other parts of your workflow. We can fit right into your existing processes, or you can use our client portal, or you can even use email if that’s more convenient or for when you’re away from your main workstation.
Our designs, paired with your content, is a recipe for success. What if you could focus 100% of your creative energy on the content that you publish, and managing your team, knowing that a huge piece of the puzzle was fully accounted for and that we can deliver your designs in as little as a day?
You won’t have to wait for days or weeks with your next pieces of content sitting in draft when your graphic design is completed quickly, to spec, and in a way that will exceed your expectations.
Graphically offers a $1 trial so that you can experience all of the benefits that we offer for yourself.
We want you to have a risk-free opportunity to see how beneficial this partnership can be for you. We’re so sure that you’ll love our service and decide to remain a member that we’re willing to give you access for just $1.
This is a fantastic opportunity to gain a leg up on your competitors. Other publishers are either lacking when it comes to graphic design, they’re overpaying which means they’ll be slower to grow in other areas, or they’re spending way too much time managing their designers. In any case, you can gain the upper hand by joining Graphically today.
