Why A DIY Approach to Design Degrades Your Brand

When other departments have influence over what’s written, more content gets crammed in, diluting both the marketing and visual impact. Sometimes, it takes an external designer to remind teams why less is more.

Design and marketing are two completely different skill sets, yet many marketers find themselves taking on design work. Whether it’s due to budget constraints or the convenience of tools like Canva, it’s become common for marketing teams to handle their own visuals. But just because you can design something yourself doesn’t mean you should.

A designer’s job description wouldn’t include marketing the agency, arranging events, or managing the SEO partner. So why are designers’ jobs being pushed onto marketers?

Many teams don’t have the budget for dedicated design support, so it is understandable why marketers end up creating the comms they’ve ideated and will be using in their campaigns (I’ll get onto what you can do when working with a small budget in a minute). But in any other industry, you wouldn’t let budget constraints justify doing a professional’s job yourself. You can fix your own car or rewire your house, but you know a professional would do a better job.

The problem is, this DIY approach degrades a brand over time. The best way to prevent that is to have a design partner you work with on an ongoing basis. You’ll have your marketing plan, regular meetings with the design team to brief them on new projects, and a system to manage deadlines and tasks, like Trello, so you get design work back completed while you focus on actual marketing.

The knock-on effect of weakening your brand over time, or presenting it at a lower positioning through unprofessional design, will cost more in the long run than investing in a designer from the outset. An in-house designer is an option, but the main issues we see include:

1. There’s usually no one to train or inspire them like they would have at a design agency.
2. They often become more of an artworker than a designer, as people constantly look over their shoulder and direct their work.

A design agency, on the other hand, offers more than just one person’s skill set. You usually get access to motion design, branding expertise, and, depending on the agency, you might even be able to use retainer hours for website improvements. 

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Compare all of that with the cost of getting all those people in-house, set up with the right equipment and training, managing them, etc., and it makes sense to have an outsourced team. These days, with everyone working from home a lot anyway, the difference between inhouse and outsourced isn’t anywhere near as stark.

One Message at a Time

Marketers already understand the importance of pushing one message at a time. People don’t have the attention span to remember three or four key messages in one piece of communication. Designers understand this too and can reinforce it through design. But when marketing, the MD, and other business departments all have influence over what’s written, more and more content gets crammed in, diluting both the marketing and visual impact. Sometimes, it takes an external designer to remind teams why less is more.

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If You Can’t Afford an Agency, Here’s What to Do

For teams without the budget to work with a design agency, Canva isn’t entirely off the table. It just needs to be managed properly. Some of our clients who want to include design in their role (though it is generally advised against, as marketing and design require completely different skill sets) use Canva templates set up by one of our designers. This means:

• Marketers can change text and swap images, but key elements like background colours and typography remain locked.
• Notes can be left within the templates to guide usage.
• In weekly meetings, marketers and designers review work together, allowing the designer to teach design theory and techniques over time.

This way, marketers who genuinely want to improve their design skills can build them gradually, rather than making ad-hoc design decisions that weaken the brand.

Final Thoughts

In an ideal world, marketers would focus on marketing, and designers would focus on design. If budget constraints make that impossible, Canva can be an option, but only if it’s managed well by a professional who can maintain consistency and quality over time. 

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