Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Firstly, knowing your weaknesses is the first step to becoming a successful marketer. You can't do everything.

If you find you lack that sort of thing, then make sure the things you do are not so dependent on that. Eventually you will find someone who can help you with the visual side of things - and you will help them from your own standpoint.

Whatever you do you will make mistakes. Not even a talented graphic designer can get everything right all of the time. It could be that your very inability means you have more sympathy for the man on the street - because few of them are talented graphic designers.

Hope this helps kick off the answers.

Moriarty xx

I don't see it as a big weakness. A good eye for design may be helpful to have, but is not a requirement. Just means you will have to rely on others for that part of the work. But a marketing manager will always have to farm out parts of the job to experts - just means that this is one are that you will farm out.

No idea on how to cultivate this, if you were to try to overcome it.

A good visual eye -- that is, the ability to distinguish between great design and not -- is a significant factor in the success of a marketing manager.

Here's why: Visuals are a form of language that differs from verbal communication, and there is a significant (and growing) portion of the population who understand, prefer and rely on visual communication. Note the number of wide-screen TVs, video games and computer tablets sold in recent years. YouTube has become a leading search engine; every phone takes pictures and videos -- and forwards them. The evidence of growing visual significance is all around us.

The best way to develop or nurture a visual eye -- to learn visual discernment just as we have learned verbal discernment -- is to learn more about design. What works, and why? To do this over a period of time, work with a quality designer, inviting that designer to teach at every opportunity about WHY he/she made the color, image, layout and and other aesthetic choices in the work they develop, and why some design tools perform better than others. Learning these details gives one the ability to see and evaluate design work in a more expert way, and to become much better at directing that work and avoiding mediocre results.

If we were living in Italy, we wouldn't tell ourselves that learning Italian was unnecessary. Well, as marketers, we are living in a visual universe, so ....

I think too many people get bent out of shape on the
issue of visual acuity and my best advice is to focus on
your strengths.

Regardless of what you've seen in job listings, or what
you've heard from other people, UNLESS those instances
have a profoundly important bearing on your immediate
future they are of no consequence. None.

Leave the visuals to your creatives: they have skills you
lack, you have skills THEY lack. If you, as a marketer, have SPECIFIC needs for the way something needs to look, voice them. If not, offer your creatives a clear brief, ask for their input and opinions and weigh these points against strategic goals, otherwise get out of their way and let them do what they do best.

At its core, marketing's greatest power lies in the messages
it delivers, less so on what something looks like.

Often, over-executed, over-designed creative work that has no real message worth speak of (or, worth receiving come
to think of it) gains praise or attention when really none is warranted—at least, not according to how much the ad or
the TV spot drives sales.

So, don't worry about it. If you'd like to learn a few of the basic elements of design and competition but have never thought you could, well, I've got good news for you: you can.

And, it's easier than you might think.

Here's how: go to your nearest book store or search online for a book called "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams.

In this book you'll learn a clutch of fundamental ideas and thoughts on how design works, how to apply specific elements of design, and how to better understand the process of design. It's an EASY read.

Here's a (non affiliate) link to the book on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/The-Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic/dp/1566091...

I can pretty much guarantee that when you're applying for jobs, most of the other applicants for marketing positions will NOT have read this book, let alone be aware of its content or be in any frame of mind to apply its contents to their careers.

But YOU will.

Good luck.