Imagine that the owner of a company – it could be any company – meets a prospective customer at the airport. After a brief discussion of what the company does, she hands over her business card, promises to send a brochure and asks the ‘potential source of income’ to check out the company website when he gets the chance.

Now imagine that the business card is poorly designed and printed crookedly on cheap paper. The website was made by the woman’s 13-year-old son and the brochure was knocked up in Word using a standard template.

What’s the prospective customer going to think about the woman’s company?

Will he believe it to be professional? To deliver professional and accurate results?

I doubt it.

The fact is that a company whose ‘design’ presence is shoddy or poorly executed is also likely to be lackadaisical in its work ethic, produce poor products or be unmindful of customer feedback.

At least that’s the impression of most people.

Professionalism is an all-or-nothing concept. Nobody would fence off 90 percent of their prize bull field in the very best bull-proof materials and leave 10 percent of the perimeter unfenced. It’s not logical. The Titanic still had a ninety percent fully watertight hull when it went down. Most flat tires are only flat at the bottom.

And just like these obvious examples, a single instance of amateur presentation can sink a deal with the most professional of companies.

Yet so many smaller businesses seem to think they can design their own logo using WordArt, produce their own documents and print them on their home laser printer, or utilise a free-template host for their corporate website. It stands to reason that many of these businesses also have an email that reads something like nickybrownsflorist@hotmail.com. (Or worse, boomboompow31@hotmail.com)

There’s an old saying; you never get a second chance at making a first impression. When that first impression comes from a website or a brochure or a business card, what does shoddy design tell people?

I’ll tell you; that this person runs a cottage industry business from their spare bedroom, that’s what. And this despite the fact that some larger companies employing upwards of 50 people also fall into the same category.

If you’re reading this, what you should do next depends on what you are.

1. If you’re a designer, go out and seek businesses like these and try to convince them that their very survival depends on competing with the ‘big boys’ and all their agency-prepared design
2. If you’re an employee of such a company, and it’s YOUR job to create the website/business cards/brochures etcetera, then for gosh sakes up-skill yourself – or convince your boss that you need professional help
3. And if you’re a business owner whose design ‘window on the world’ is letting your company down, engage a designer now. At the very least get some guidance

For professional designers this is a rich source of business, and so it should be. The desktop publishing revolution of the eighties, followed by the internet presence revolution of the nineties, means that a small, one-person business can now compete head-on with a huge corporation. At least they can where first impressions are concerned.

But are they?

Many have failed to grasp the huge boost that technology has given them. All it takes is a professional designer to pave the way.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under Business and Marketing, Graphic Design From Home, graphic design, web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.