A lot can be said on the topic of the importance of visual materials design in strategic consulting. There are many reasons why graphic design is crucial for the consulting industry in general and strategy in particular. The majority of these are connected to the perception of professionalism and the ability to convey an idea that the consulting materials should have. Below there are several key areas in which design is especially important in strategic consulting.
Presentations
The majority of presentations in consulting are for internal discussions. Consultants talk with presentations. At the same time, the final results are presented to the customers and clients. Accordingly, it is crucial that these presentations are efficient in explaining the main discussion points, but simultaneously the need to look immaculate in terms of the picture that a client looks at.
With presentations there are several points to pay attention to. Basically, everything should be done according to some standard. These standards are normally taught at consulting agencies or consulting companies: every consultant has been drilled for several years at how to create a proper presentation. Here are several points to pay attention to:
- overall tidiness including aligned visual blocks, distinct graphical patterns, commensurate colors;
- ability to use the best visual scheme or visual pattern for each slide to efficiently convey the slide idea or message;
- variety of the slide design means that sometimes you need to go with a chart, then a scheme, then a process graphical representation, then a table, etc.;
- the necessity to adhere to a custom color palette or proper application of the corporate colors and standards;
- extremely careful use of animations, bright pictures, videos, and other media.
Marketing materials
The second area where design is extensively used is marketing. No question that business strategy is in many times closely connected to and overlaps with strategic marketing. So, it’s crucial to have a better understanding of how marketing campaigns are designed and to what extent visual and graphical representation is important in marketing.
By no means strategic consultants should be top-level professionals in marketing design, but at the very least they should understand and be aware of the intricacies of marketing visual concepts and ways to represent products. There are several aspects of marketing design to look at:
- brand creation and design;
- marketing campaigns including ads, distributional materials, texts, etc.;
- the graphical design used in marketing campaigns.
Complex processes display
The third area where design is important is the actual visual description of the technological processes or complex ideas done within strategic consulting projects. Since it is the essence of consulting to present complex processes in a more understandable way the key idea here is to get rid of all the secondary processes and concentrate on the core. Going from top to bottom is normally the best way to design these processes.
In conclusion, these are the three key areas of design application in strategic consulting. Indeed, more needs for better design exist within the consulting environment but those are deemed less important.