PR & Visual Design (A Designer's Perspective)

Emma Roebuck, Creative Director at Ox Designers, is our trusted design partner. With over 20 years’ experience, she’s a design and creative expert who’s helped bring countless campaigns to life – including many of ours! Here, she shares her thoughts on the relationship and synergy between PR & visual design.

A successful PR strategy rests on a clear and engaging narrative. Once assembled, this narrative then needs to reach and engage with a brand’s audience. And while there are multiple ways to deliver this narrative, visual design serves as a particularly powerful conduit.

Here are the three ways design does this:

Imagery has the unique power to create an emotional connection with an audience. A connection, once formed, that will ultimately cultivate customer loyalty and advocacy for the brand.

For example, take Always’ campaign ‘Like A Girl’.

In the campaign image, a young girl fiercely grips onto a baseball. She radiates frustration and inner resolve, which in turn evokes both anger and empathy in the audience.

All at once we recognise, and we feel, the brand’s narrative of driving positive social change.

Do what you love ⚾❤ Keep Playing #LikeAGirl 🌟 #FridayMotivation pic.twitter.com/x1uBHXuDvP

— Always (@Always) March 29, 2019

So clearly the messaging in this piece is powerful, however given that 90% of information transmitted to the human brain is visual – does that suggest the image does more of the legwork? Or perhaps it’s the perfect symbiosis between the two. Nonetheless, image choice is key.

Another way visual design strengthens the PR narrative is its ability to streamline information. Which is especially important in a world saturated by online content.

Visual design achieves this by following the age-old theory of design hierarchy: Order fonts, colours and composition in a strategic way and the reader’s eye will jump straight to the key message. This practice is based on the Gestalt principles: Our brains instinctively group similar elements, recognise patterns and simplify complex images.

Many brands claim that the first three seconds of an advert are the most important. With that in mind, professional design is no longer a nice-to-have, but a prerequisite for brands looking to stand out.

A key PR mission is to maintain consistency across multiple formats and channels. This is an especially important goal because, without it, the brand narrative loses credibility and trust.

Step in the supportive role of visual design.

Professional brand identity generates and protects visual consistency across all media: website, advertising, social media, event signage, the list goes on. Brand identity is no longer a logo sitting in the top right-hand corner of the company letterhead: it now has to be a full and flexible visual tool library which translates well on a 10 meter banner as well as shrinking down to a micro 1:1 social profile ident.

If the look is consistent, the customer will repeatedly recognise and recall a brand throughout the buying journey.

As much as visual design serves PR, the benefits are two-way.

This is because effective visual design relies on well-considered strategy: A strategy based on the deep understanding of a brand’s culture and personality, market need plus an awareness of the competitor landscape.

These three areas of research are the starting point for any (decent) PR agency, and the findings from which serve as the ideal creative brief for a designer. Without it, all the prettiest pictures in the world will have zero relevance and minimal customer engagement.

The PR-design synergy is a strong one. Done right, it achieves both impressive results and memorable campaigns.