Should Social Media Marketers Know Graphic Design?
So I’ve been searching the internet for a few years observing job advertisements for a social media marketer. Looking at the various descriptions, I often wondered what marketing is after all. This is because they all said something similar to this:
You should know how to write articles in excellent English (or any other language) without grammar mistakes and plagiarism. In addition, you must manage and implement online campaigns. You must have basic knowledge of SEO, HTML, and CSS.
But there is one thing that you have to do, which is usually not mentioned in the specification.
Can you guess?
It’s graphic design.
The internet is buzzing with debates and articles about whether or not social media marketers should know graphic design. It turns out they should but to an extent. However, if they know more than a defined limit, that’s cool too.
Extent Of Knowing And Practicing Design
While you are not required to be a full-fledged graphic designer like Michael Bierut or Chip Kidd, you certainly need to become a part-time designer in your full-time marketing job. It’ll be surprising for me to know that you don’t have to do any designing.
When you’re creating visual posts, storyboard for YouTube videos and presentations – you are designing. Although you may be using free or paid tools like PicMonkey, Canva, or Adobe Spark to design, you still need a foundation or intermediate level of design knowledge and good aesthetic sense to pull off a successful online marketing campaign. To better your understanding you can read graphic design books or simply look at the infographic below to clear confusions about basic and most important design terms.
In a LinkedIn discussion “No need for designers, DIY tools will do the job!” some designers were quite raged over the idea that anyone can do graphic design. They asserted that graphic design is not something anybody can do. Nevertheless, some also said that social media marketers can use the services of design software to promote content or even to avoid paying for a graphic designer.
P.S. All those professional graphic designers who think that what marketers do isn’t graphic design should swap their lives and see for themselves.
Learn Graphic Design For Marketing
You don’t need a design degree to be a graphic designer, seriously. There are plenty of triumphant designers like David Carson, who learned this subject via short certificate courses, books, and online resources. You can too. Why not?
If you have the determination to excel in your field then you should be a passionate learner, this is what I’ve understood. The renowned artist, Pablo Picasso once said:
So if your boss asks you to design and make something striking, don’t give him/her the “Whaaat” look. Be a sport, take the challenge and produce a masterpiece.
What If You Work For A Design Agency As A Marketer?
All the more reason to know graphic design. You don’t want your company to look like a fool because you used a wrong term to define something. For example, you refered to Coca Cola’s logo as a lettermark. That’ll be a boo-boo.
You need to know the difference between these commonly misunderstood words in graphic design because in a digital world, you need to wear many hats. Along with a marketer, you are a designer and a writer. Thus, you should know your stuff!
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