Is Design Becoming Everyone’s Specialism
The Designer/Marketeer Fable
When I was interviewing for marketing roles a while back expectations seem to be that I know enough for the company to avoid hiring a designer.
I love design, really do. I often say that I should have taken an art degree instead of a marketing one. I love the thought, the process and even the software. However I’m not a designer and would not entitled myself to say I am just because I know how to use Adobe Creative Cloud. Even though I’ve dabbed in it, understand the software and believe to have an eye for it (which to many experienced professionals only means that I’m critical), I’m not a designer and truly respect the professionals who have become one through hard work and persistency.
Just because someone may be creative, have a critical eye and attention to detail, it does not mean that they understand: brand, layout, colours, fonts and profiles and how all these random elements work together in order to achieve good design. Good design is not about putting some stuff together in Photoshop or Canva, but understanding how the user eye will be driven to that visual content; What will capture attention in a sea of visual input and the fine balance between copy and graphics. It’s often more about knowing how your audience will interpret and interact with your design.
If marketing and design share the same high level premise: Knowing your audience, than why can’t marketeers also design?
Many job adverts seem to want marketeers to be designers and to me, this only shows how careful you are with your brand. Almost every entry level marketing role asks for experience in creating visuals, graphics or video. Yes, there is a real need for a marketeer to be creative but we can’t expect that everyone interested in marketing only uses the right side of their brain (the creative side).
Marketing needs design, no doubt. But it needs design the same way it needs content, analytics, web development, operations and many other roles. Marketeers can have an eye for design, but design is not the ultimate goal of a marketing professional, the main goal is to organise, structure, plan and assess effectiveness of all tasks involved in sharing your brand with the world.
Let’s be fair to designers… Yes, marketeers can make quick edits, fix wording or typos and sort out layouts. But let’s give designers the role to be creative, to develop concepts, to define brand guidelines and to assist your business in making it stand out from the crowd. If a plumber only does plumbing and an electrician only does electrics, why is it expected from a marketeer to be a designer too? There is already so much that is currently needed from a marketeer on a daily basis that, in my opinion, is much better to leave the specialisms to the specialists.