10 Design Guidelines For Startup Businesses

Customarily most startup businesses are engrossed in developing their offering and generating funds for their venture’s capital requirements. They are so occupied with other stuff that they mostly forget or put aside design, except when they are offering a design related product.

Good design is an essential element for all businesses but its slightly more important in early-stage startup businesses.

As it can make a huge impact in determining the startups future as solid design can generate higher investments; good design makes it convenient to be outstanding, to attain reliability and leave an extraordinary first impression. Here are 10 design guidelines for entrepreneurs that will put you on the go.

Don’t undermine the importance of good design

Design is a very powerful tool, so powerful that it can impact your product. The way you present your product will make or break it.

Engage a design expert

As we see with most of the startups, where a single person is seen doing the each and everything. And in case of startups it is sometimes necessary for one person to be in charge of everything.  But this shouldn’t apply to design because it is extremely crucial to the success of your startup to have a design expert for your design needs. You can engage a small agency, a freelance designer, or an acquaintance. The importance of engaging design help particularly increases if you have a completely different background.

Design is subjective

Design preferences vary person to person and asking a number of opinions will complicate things for you.  So, no matter how tempted you are to take opinions it is important to limit yourself. If you want opinions, it is suggested that you brainstorm and list multiple ideas. However, when it comes to the next phase people directly working on the design should pick out the finest ideas.

Simple is best

A solid design is the one, which involves as little design as possible we as see this from the example of Apple. It is suggested not to overstress on a lot of colors, fonts, and components in a website, or a flyer. Simple is best and adding too many colors and other elements will destroy your design.

Done is better than perfection

Designers are perfection oriented people. And in order to create pixel perfect items they spend multiple hours working on one icon. This has to change especially when you work for a startup, at least not in the initial years. It is recommended that you request your expert designer to forget perfect for a while and abide by the rule of good enough. In this way, they will maximize their time and the project will cost less. Archie Gorky (Movements in art since 1945) said, “I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while.”

Make audience specific designs

Designs of a new venture producing a winter coat will be different from a business developing a mobile marketing app. It is vital to conduct a market research and adjust your design according to the preferences of your target market.

Don’t stop

In the beginning you will be able to afford a simple logo and one page website. That will be just fine in the beginning. You will always have the time and funds to mend your design in the future. But this doesn’t mean that you start off by creating something in paint yourself, remember it has to be something produced by a designer.

Mistakes don’t mean that you stop

Once you embark on the journey of creating a design it means you will be making mistakes. It doesn’t mean that you have to stop because you can always rectify those mistakes later on.  We have seen brands develop and grow, and so will yours.

Make your brand consistent

It suggested to keep your brand consistent be it online or offline. This will affect the long term productivity of your brand. However, you can launch restyling efforts whenever you want.

Seek feedback and adapt accordingly

Seek feedback from your stakeholders, customers, friends and associates. Feedback is crucial for a business’s success. Obviously all feedback will not be worthy but you can for sure benefit from some of it.

It is always advisable to take help from a professional web design company. 4M Designers, our Dubai-based web design company can help you in designing your website.