Audiences & Using Design To Reach Them
As a designer, it’s very important to have a target audience with your brand and website. Your website or portfolio, after all, is ultimately what people will get the “first impression” of your design work and skills. It is also important to know how to reach out to clients and anyone who is involved in your network.
Having a target audience is like being a celebrity and having a fanbase. That audience will view all of your designs, get to know you online as a person through your presence, without actually knowing you in person, and some may even call you up five times a week asking for some ideas or a job idea.
I think having a brand that attracts a certain crowd or types of people will pretty much make up your audience automatically. I also think that those people who are attracted to you digitally and to your brand are the target audience that you’re looking to reach, but not always. Little things like targeted practices and type of design or genre of art you put out there for others to see contributes to who is attracted to it,
A target audience can be anything from who you desire to have as clients, who you want demographically to view your online presence, and more. There are so many possibilities for who will be your “fans” and there are so many ideas as a designer you can have for that. Your target audience could be something as simple as anyone who admires or desires your work, meaning you don’t really have a specific target audience and it is pretty much anyone who comes as they please.
To reach a target audience or client, portraying a message or design specific to them is important. This can be done in several ways. I think that creating designs specific to their desires or making work that speaks to their personality or brand if they’re a company, as well as setting up paid advertising campaigns, are some great basic ways to reach those who align with your audience. A company may have specific services that they offer and want their brand to represent what they do for others, and can advertise that across the board.
In terms of design projects, designing toward the audience’s style or goal is important. Doing so is a successful way to reach out to your audience as a designer and brand. There are plenty of design tips and strategies I advise and agree with to reach out and widen your audience for your website. One very effective way to reach out to a target audience is to involve them with the work you are designing. Interaction is one of the best ways to prove to others who you are and what you can offer them that others will not. Sit down with who you desire to connect within your works and have them input their ideas and details. Another more technical way to reach out to a target audience is having interviews and surveys. If there are going to be specific people involved in your audience, having their feedback and opinion on your work is important. Otherwise, it’s more difficult to assume what others’ interests are. Something else that can pull in reach too is creating training and presentation seminars that showcase your design ideas and your knowledge of them. Sharing your work with the public is important because it puts you out in the world that much more and exposes other designers and audiences to you. This brings a better chance for building your target audience and having a relationship with them.
Many designers make use of their design skills to maintain their desired audience by using repetition of their knowledge to grab others’ attention and expanding knowledge through experience in designing for others. You can never truly stop learning, as the industry standard constantly changing and evolving in design. There is so much you can do with design not only for yourself but for others, with the right tools and motivation. It is easier than most wonder to bring in an audience and build your brand through design.