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Valerie Loop, University Park Creative Arts

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Valerie Loop, University Park Creative Arts

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Shelley Reed-Wallace Harding Visual Arts

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Shelley Reed-Wallace Harding Visual Arts

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Nannette Goodman - Northwest School of the Arts

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Cynthia Kasberger

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Ms. Balekomoso-Harding Univ. Art Class Basic Rules

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Ms. Balekomoso-Harding Univ. Art Class Basic Rules

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This got us thinking about how this applies to designing the creatives for a campaign. And by design, we mean everything from choosing the design elements, such as color, typography, design style, and imagery; to working on our brief; to getting your designs done.

When you know your audience you can tailor your designs to them and appeal to why they need your product/service.

All the design gurus out there agree you must shape your marketing, advertising, and social media design according to your target audience. The vibe and aesthetic you use in your marketing designs can attract your audience's attention like a moth to a flame.

Chances are you've seen examples of this across generations. Whether a brand is targeting millennials, Gen Z, or so forth, when they nail the right vibe and aesthetics in their designs they resonate with the target audience on a deeper emotional level.

Want to create these results for your brand? Keep reading! In this blog, Kimp is bringing you a curated list of tips, best practices, and targeted marketing campaign designs to help you design for your target audience.

Why design for a specific audience

Other than making the creative appealing to a niche audience, are there any concrete benefits when we center the design on the target audience?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is below:

Knowing your customer before dishing out a design brief does not only make for good business practice, but for a profitable one too. Designing for a specific audience means you narrow down your options in every aspect of the design - color, font, font style, design style, images, and other elements like shape, layout, and hierarchy.

You attract an audience that matters. Some creatives must appeal to a broader audience, such as billboards, flyers, or even a social media post for brand awareness. But most designs have a specific function, and you know that only a segment of consumers faces the problem you are solving. So, by designing exclusively for this niche, you increase your chances of attracting the right leads for your sales pipeline.

Your brand saves money, time, and resources to a greater extent, thereby also improving your ROI. With targeted design, your ads get more clicks and bring in customers for your business. The need to constantly vary creatives for A/B tests also reduces, letting your design team focus more on quality than quantity.

Understanding your target audience and the usage of a product can elevate design to new levels.

Need help finding a design team to help you reach your target audience?

With a Kimp Graphics subscription or Kimp Video subscription, you get matched up with a dedicated design team who will get to know your target audience. And they'll tailor your designs to reach them.

Book a call to learn more.

6 Tips to successfully design for your target audience

Now that we've established why you need to design for your target audience, let's look at how your brand can do this.

1) Define the buyer persona

To design successfully for your target audience, it is time to start at the beginning, as the saying goes. It might sound too obvious, but brands often make the mistake of not defining their buyer persona to the tee. An underwhelming target audience overview will lead to a half-baked design, not helping you in any way.

Yes, you know what demographic you are targeting. But the key is how much do you know about them? The more details you give your design team, the better results you're going to get from your designs.

A few of the details that will aid your design team in delivering targeted designs are:

Demographic details such as age, gender, income, education, and employment. These help draw a picture of how the audience will perceive and interact with the design.

Identifying details such as other interests, location, and platform of choice to view the design. These guide the design styles and any local references to connect the customer with the creatives.

Technology has blessed us with many analytic tools, such as Facebook Audience Insights, Google Analytics, Mention, Brandwatch, and CrazyEgg, to name a few. Make use of these to accumulate in-depth knowledge of your existing and target audience.

Kimp Tip: A detail-heavy design brief is your way of ensuring the design turns out just the way you want it to. Include as many details and information you can in that document so that your design team can create a product that will appeal to your target audience.

With Kimp's unlimited design services, you can create unlimited requests for both Graphic Design and Video for your brand. Just submit your design brief and wait for the amazing results our teams bring in.

2) Employ design thinking

Understanding things from the customers' perspective is exactly what design thinking is. Design thinking is an approach to any problem, with the sole aim being to solve it from the users' perspective.

For a business owner, this can mean designing a social media post that is easy to read, navigate, and understand. It can also signify a menu design that has a symbolic representation of some food items for comprehension if it is a new or unfamiliar product. Sometimes it can be as simple as choosing a font based on legibility rather than your preference.

It can be quite hard to break away from your preconceived notions and design for the end-user instead. But it saves you a ton of effort, cost, and resources in satisfying your customers. When communication becomes simpler, you can move on to value addition and truly win over the audience.

So focus on this when you create your design brief. Keep text to a minimum, as much as possible, and let your design team know how you want your audience to use your design.

Check out this detailed guide by Kimp on Design Thinking to a deeper dive into this topic.

3) Leverage color to attract the right audience

Color is a major element in any design. It is what your user will notice instantly, even before your logo or text. So, if you want to create a design that perfectly aims at your target audience, you must begin with color.

Like scores of blogs, including ours, have stated, color psychology is a theory that almost all designers use to evoke a desired emotion/reaction from the audience. But that is not the only role of color or the only process to use color and evoke emotions.

Every generation, gender, and industry has a different interpretation of color. It evokes distinct memories and emotions. For example, white can mean peace for some people and also mean mourning for some. Some use the color black to signify mourning and still others associate it with a sleek modern look.

Studies have even shown that there are some shades that some genders gravitate towards more than others.

By defining your target audience and using colors mindfully in your composition, you can:

Connect with the audience instantly.

Leverage the principles of visual hierarchy effectively. When you know what colors some people notice more, you can create clever designs to help guide customers as to what to read first.

Evoke nostalgia and other emotional connections so that the customer feels an affinity to your brand subconsciously.

It is also important to understand these color decisions start from the first branding step itself. So take time to fully comprehend what each color can mean for your target audience before getting started on your logo, signages, and another branding.

And when you use complementary colors in your different designs for emphasis or accents.

Kimp Tip: Color is important, but a good design team will tell you how dicey it is to manage color, too. It reacts with some printing mediums more than others. Or changes with the screen resolution, and wrecks havoc when used in wrong combinations. That's why it's so important you let your designers know how your design will be used.

4) Choose the right font to get your message across

After color, if there is another design element that molds perceptions on the subconscious level, it is typography. Every little thing about typography signifies a deeper meaning and connection to the viewer/reader.

For example, you might have noticed that different generations communicate differently, and across different mediums, based on the norms they are used to. And their preferences.

Some love script fonts while others find it different to read and fussy. Some are fond of display fonts while others find them too flash. So, if you want your brand to appeal to a particular demographic, use the typographical styles they connect with.

Be it Serif, Sans-Serif, Script Fonts, or Display Fonts, people associate them mentally with a brand personality. And of course, we know that different brand personalities are attractive for various niche audiences. So in a way, the typeface you choose dictates the audience you attract.

You can also combine fonts, typefaces, and styles in a limited, experimental way to guide your audience through the visual hierarchy of a design. Similar to color, when you choose a font type and style that you know is appealing to a target audience, you then impact what they read first and how they navigate your design.

Kimp Tip: Fonts can make or break your design very easily. In fact, there are online communities that quarrel over font choices by popular brands every day. And beyond aesthetics consider function. Some typefaces are also more suitable for print media than digital, so you must also understand how your target audience access your designs for best results.
Want to know more about fonts in branding and other designs? Check out our guide here. You can also test different fonts in your designs with Kimp's unlimited graphic design service subscription. Sign up for a free trial to get started.

5) Pick the right design style

One of the most unexplored elements of design by a brand can be design style. There's a wide range to choose from. Think vintage, minimalist, artistic, pop art, contemporary, and so on.

But many brands become fixated on one or the other and hit the ground running with it, never looking back.

A little bit of experimentation can go a long way though. Given the chance, your designers can explore different styles and variations to help you understand what suits your brand best. And by that we mean what generates the best results.

At Kimp we've come to see that while a brand's personality, messaging, and industry must guide a design style, there's one other factor to always consider. The user.

As your audience, and your brand, evolves, it's important to adapt the design styles you choose to find what resonates most.

To do this, you'll need to occasionally A/B test your design, varying elements to see what your audience engages with most. To ensure successful tests, and designs that hit the mark, make sure your design briefs include all the details your designers will need.

This way they'll be able to analyze the target audience, message, and the product's vibe, so to say. And they can arrive at a design that achieves your goals.

This goes for content too. The tone and language you choose to communicate with different audiences will surely vary in real life. And the same is required in marketing copy.

Kimp Tip: Understanding which design style will work for your target audience takes iterations, research, and experimentation. You must understand how your competitors' design, what other products appeal to your target audience and be ready to run many A/B tests. You can also run polls on social media to gather feedback. And use this feedback to find the aesthetic that best matches your audience.

Does this process sound very complicated and expensive to you? Well, not if you choose a Kimp subscription for unlimited graphic design services. You'll get affordable rates and a ton of top-quality creatives.

6) Set the right vibe

This heading may sound vague to you, but there is no better way to put it. Imagine you are hosting a party, and there are a bunch of people coming to your home. Would you not spend at least a bit of time preparing to get the mood right? From picking the right music, to cooking/ordering the right cuisine, and ensuring that the house itself is inviting to them?

That's what a vibe is. And your design too needs to get the vibe right to make someone feel comfortable enough to interact with it positively.

This includes everything from:

Choice of imagery you include

Quality of graphics

The graphic design style such as illustration, vector images, or flat style design

And the tone your design takes

Be clear about what you are saying. For instance, is it a light-hearted message or a serious one? And then pick the right combination of design elements to convey that tone and vibe.

Or you can choose a design team who knows all this and can work off your design brief in a jiffy like Kimp Graphics 😉

Kimp Tip: Whether it is a billboard or a social media post, it is not the size of the design but the depth that attracts your audience. Every individual element has a message for the passerby, but it is also important that they all work in harmony, too.

That is what makes up a good vibe in a design. So, don't lose the forest for the trees. And ensure you work with a design team that can elevate your individual design elements with the right composition.

Design for your Target Audience with Kimp Design Subscriptions

If you have a design that can attract, communicate with, and convert your target audience, you've hit the ultimate trifecta. But achieving that is not always so easy. Building buyer personas, choosing the right platform to reach your audience, and creating designs that will connect can be challenging.

We know this, and that's why we've developed the Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video subscriptions to help you grow your brand. Our expert designers will translate your design brief into creatives that get you results.

Improve your marketing ROI, and spend a lot less time worrying about designs, just by opting for Kimp's unlimited graphic design services.

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6 Tips To Successfully Design For Your Target Audience - Kimp

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Do you design for your target audience? Find out how doing this can help increase your marketing ROI. And start generating better results for your brand.

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"We Are All Artists" affirmation poster

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Name flyer to put outside my classroom

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Visual Art banner for Canvas (Thanks Lainey!)

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