You’re a business professional. And, perhaps unexpectedly, your job requires you to create communication designs all the time–PowerPoint presentations, data visualizations, sales reports, user’s manuals, web pages, instructions, marketing collateral, fliers, business cards, you name it. But chances are pretty good that, unless you specifically took courses in graphic design in high school or college, you probably have little background in designing information. Where should you start? I’d recommend Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles of Good Design.
If you don’t frequently pay attention to the people who design things like record players and calculators, you may not be familiar with Rams, one of the world’s most renowned industrial designers. Rams and his teams designed some of the most iconic household items (many for the Brauns company) during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, including wall clocks, men’s electric shavers, easy chairs, clock radios, shelves, and more.
Despite his seemingly endless number of iconic designs, it’s likely that Rams will be most remembered for his now-famous “Ten Principles of Good Design.” Initially intended as a list of things to consider for product designers, Rams’ ten principles reach across all areas of design, including that one critically important to business professionals: information design. As a business professional, you need to make your communications persuasive, engaging, memorable, and meaningful. Follow Rams’ 10 Princples and you’ll be in pretty good shape to do just that:
1. Good Design is Innovative
When you create stuff at work, whether it be for employees, clients, or for consumers, what you create should be distinct and useful. It should resonate with your audience and it should be original work. Make your PowerPoints, reports, collateral, and other documents innovative–meaning they add something new to something proven. Don’t get crazy, but do get innovative.
2. Good Design is Useful
Make your documents useful in every way. Make them readable, functional, and well-organized. Think about their size and their purpose. Don’t do something weird like create a business card that doesn’t follow business card shapes–if it can’t fit in a normal business card slot or wallet, it’s not useful. If it’s a PowerPoint slide but you have a chart that’s too complex to interpret in your presentation, it’s not useful. If your emails are too long to read, they’re not useful either. Make all communications useful all the time.
3. Good Design is Aesthetic
Regardless of what you are creating, you should make it look nice. Consider my article on how to make documents look professional in five steps. Think about fonts, white space, margins, and your use of photos. The truth is, pretty things work better (ask Donald Norman, who has a chapter of his book, Why We Love or Hate Everyday Things, entitled “Attractive Things Work Better”). People like things that look nice. Do your emails, reports, slide decks, charts and graphs, handouts, and so forth look nice?
4. Good Design is Understandable
All information you create should be accessible and easy to understand. If you designed a stacked bar graph, for example, did you take time to title and label it? Could someone interpret it the first time they looked at it? Did you caption your photos (and, of course, did you use photos that were relevant?) Don’t include information that detracts or creates ambiguity. Business professionals succeed when their communications are understandable.
5. Good Design is Unobtrusive
“Unobtrusive” basically means that it doesn’t grab unnecessary attention or that it’s not too gaudy or self-indulgent. In other words, don’t give people more than they need. If you’ve ever been to a plumbing company’s website, for example, where the home page is covered in “about us” and “our mission” gobbledygook, then you know what I’m talking about. People don’t come to a plumbing website to learn about the history of the company, starting in 1942 on Uncle Billy’s farm. They come to the website because their toilet doesn’t work! When you communicate with people, make sure you’re giving them precisely what they need, not an epistle about why you’re awesome.
6. Good Design is Honest
“Honest” design can mean a lot of things, but I like to associate this with “authentic.” Give people something that comes from you, something that is real. As soon as you try to force a brand identity or a personal characteristic that isn’t real, people can feel it. Is your brand authentic to who you are as a company and as a people? Do your materials and presentations represent you well?
7. Good Design is Longlasting
This doesn’t necessarily apply to creating emails (who wants a longlasting email???) but as a business professional, you might be asked to create something that is viewed or referenced often. Logos, of course, should be styled and designed to last as long as possible (think of Coca-cola’s logo or Nike’s). But there are other things that you want to be stylistically up-to-date and lasting as long as possible: your resume, your business card, and even presentations that you hope people will remember. Take the time to make things that make an impact, that aren’t just fleeting and forgetful.
8. Good Design is Thorough to the Last Detail
Don’t leave important information out, first of. But, in addition to being complete, make sure that you’ve paid attention to detail. Are you using sentence structure and punctuation in creative and engaging ways? Have you included photos that really speak to your audience (and did you crop them to produce the greatest communicative effect?) Do your communications effectively capture everything your audiences need to know?
9. Good Design is Environmentally Friendly
If you’re actually printing and producing stuff that effects the environment, do your best to minimize the footprint. One little cost-saving thing to think about, for example, is that there are fonts that use less ink than other fonts. If you’re printing a lot of stuff, you might seek fonts that use less ink–this is good for the environment and the bank account.
10. Good Design is as Little Design as Possible
Okay, so we just said to be “thorough to the last detail” but now we’re saying to give as little as possible. In concert with the idea that you don’t want to be obtrusive, you really ought to simplify as much as you can, whenever you can. But…you still need to be thorough. So give people everything they need but always be looking for ways to cut out fluff. Remove works, photos, and design elements that just create noise. Always ask yourself: is there a simpler, cleaner way of doing this? If so, do it!