08 Feb 2021

6 Helpful Tips for Merchandise Design to Help Grow Your Business

The need for impactful branding and marketing has led businesses to find new means to connect and communicate with their target audience.

Merchandise design is one such effective means that helps businesses to establish a unique and strong brand identity.

Merchandise, for the uninitiated, is any type of goods sold in the market and when a brand’s logo and messaging is used on such goods, it turns into “brand merchandising”.

Some of the commonest products which are used for brand merchandising include;

-T-shirts

-Mugs

-Bags

-Stationeries

-Hoodies

-Shoes

-Hats

-Wallets

-Purse, etc.

Now, as clear from the listed products, these merchandises are what a lot of small business owners can use to ramp up their marketing efforts.

Often, businesses can be seen using brand merchandising in the form of free gifts for consumers through some events and customized holiday gifts for clients as well as office employees.

Are you looking to create custom gift designs for this holiday season?Check out our portfolio of merchandise design to see how we can help

All this, and more, goes to show why it is important for brands to focus on their merchandise design; irrespective of whether you are into the merchandise business or not.

And, this brings us to our topic of discussion for today; which is, “how to create effective merchandise design that can help grow your business?”

We have listed down 6 helpful tips for your easy reference. So, let’s get started!

Analyze latest trends

Of course! One of the very first things that you need to do when planning to design your own merchandise is to study the latest trends.

It is essential to understand where your design would stand in context with the current lifestyle trends; and otherwise. Also, quick market research will tell you what the consumers are getting attracted to the most lately.

Additionally, studying the latest design trends for brand merchandising would let you explore what your successful competitors have been doing; so that you don’t repeat the same and be distinguishable.

Look for offline inspiration

Yes! We agree that e-commerce has expanded its reach in the past decade and has become a more popular platform for consumers to shop for goods. However, that does not take away the importance and existence of brick and mortar retail outlets.

In fact, several surveys from reliable sources suggest that even today, a large chunk of consumers from the US alone (nearly 90%) like to shop offline in order to get a personalized experience of touching and feeling the product. 

This shows that when you are planning to create a custom merchandise design for your business, you should always look for offline inspiration.

And, to top it all up, the most important reason to go for offline inspiration is that your merchandise design is ultimately be used in the physical world.

Be it on a T-shirt, a coffee mug, a sling bag, or any other goods, the design you create for brand merchandising will be seen, felt, and used physically.

So, it is important to see how it will look and feel in real-time.    

Go through the messaging

Ours is a highly sensitive world; today. So, it is important that you ensure the right message is going to the public through your merchandise designs; and in the right fashion.

If, for example, you’re going for a humorous T-shirt design, with your brand logo and slogan on it, you don't want it coming across as a cheap and low-cost joke shirt.

Additionally, you need to remember that your merchandise will be displayed in retail stores for the public to see and decide whether they want to buy it or not. But, if your message is not correct, or is down-right offensive in any way, no one would want to give them space in their retail stores.

A good way to go about the messaging is to relate it with your brand’s voice. Your business’s values, vision, and ethics should reflect in the design’s messaging.

Keep your audience in mind (ALWAYS!)

Understanding your consumers is one of the most crucial steps in designing brand merchandise since all your efforts are for your target audience.

Gender, age, socio-economic level, and purchase habits are some of the many things that you’d need to keep in mind about your audience.

The core of every successful marketing strategy is to keep the audience in mind. And, merchandise design is not different.

Try to keep it simple

A design, no matter how creatively done, is of no use if the intended message doesn’t go across to the end-user. Therefore, it is important to draw a line to your creative instincts and stick to only the necessary elements in your merchandise design.

Pick appropriate colors, font styles, and symbols/icons for your design. Keep them all at minimal use in order to have sufficient whitespace; which supports clarity in the overall design.

Try to envision your design on different merchandise, such as T-shirts, Mugs, Bags, etc., and see if it offers the same essence or not.

Choose the right tools to design

Yes! Your merchandise design would be created on the digital platform before it gets physically printed on different products. Therefore, it is important to choose the right kind ofgraphic design tools to work on your designs.

Along with this, you, also, need to ensure you are using the right printer to get your designs physically. This would completely depend upon the type of merchandise you would be using your design on.

If it’s t-shirts that you’d be printing your designs on, the relevant printer needs to be used for it. You cannot simply take out an A1 size print on a sheet and stick it on the t-shirt now; would you?

Similarly, to put your design on a coffee mug, you’d need a different kind of printer for it.

To conclude…

Brand merchandising is a tested way of effective marketing and small businesses, especially, have a lot to gain from it. So, make sure you are doing your merchandise design right.

For professional support for any type of graphic design project, connect with us at support@graphicszoo.com