Graphic Design Is Not a Matter of Opinion

After more than a decade working in graphic design, there is one phrase that still sends a small shiver down my spine:

“I just don’t like it.”

Not because it’s rude. Not because the person saying it is trying to be difficult. Not because it’s bruised my ego. But because that sentence usually marks the beginning of what every designer quietly fears: design by committee.

Suddenly, the whole world and its grandmother has a preference and wants to weigh in on the judgement of your carefully constructed design. Someone’s favourite colour enters the chat. Someone else saw a ‘quirky’ font they liked on Pinterest. Before long, decisions that should be grounded in strategy begin drifting into the foggy territory of personal taste. And that is where things start to go wrong.

Because despite what many people assume, graphic design is not subjective. At least, it shouldn’t be.

Design Exists to Do a Job

Graphic design has always been a practical discipline. Long before Pinterest boards and brand moodboards existed, the core philosophy of modern design was summed up by the Bauhaus principle: Form follows function.

Design exists to communicate, to organise information, to guide attention, and to influence behaviour. Every element in a design, from typography and colour palette to spacing, hierarchy and imagery, should be there for a reason. Nothing should exist purely because your next door neighbour thinks it “looks nice”.

The legendary American designer Paul Rand, responsible for iconic identities like IBM, UPS and ABC, famously said: “Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.” Rand didn’t mean design should be pretty. He meant it should communicate something meaningful about the organisation behind it. That communication requires intention.

A good designer doesn’t just pick a font randomly because it’s fun or attractive. They pick it because it communicates the right message. For example, serif fonts might signal heritage or authority, sans-serif type might communicate modernity or efficiency, and bold, condensed typography might convey urgency or strength.

These are decisions and thought processes grounded in psychology and communication, not decoration.

Design Is Guided by Principles, Not Preferences

Graphic design isn’t guesswork. It’s built on principles that have been studied, tested and refined for decades.

Swiss designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, one of the pioneers of modernist design, believed strongly that design should be systematic and rational, and his work helped popularise grid systems in design, which organise content logically so that information becomes easier for an audience to understand.

Take visual hierarchy, for example. Humans naturally scan information in predictable ways, and designers use scale, contrast and placement to guide the eye so the most important message is seen first. Or consider Gestalt principles, which explain how people instinctively organise visual information. Our brains group related elements, follow directional cues and look for patterns that simplify what we see.

This is why alignment, spacing and grouping matter so much. When designers adjust proximity between elements, increase contrast or create visual hierarchy, they aren’t “tweaking things to look nicer”, they are working with how people actually perceive information.

In other words, design decisions are rooted in psychology and cognition.

YOU Are Not the Audience

One of the hardest truths for business owners to accept is this: You are not the target market.

Yes, it sounds obvious, yet it’s one of the most common reasons design projects go off track. Your brand identity, campaign visuals, event posters, social media graphics and advertising material should never be designed for your personal taste. They should be designed only for the people you want to reach.

That means stepping outside your own aesthetic preferences and looking at your brand from a distance. When you run a business, naturally you are deeply and emotionally invested in it. You know the story behind the brand and the quality of your product or service. But your audience doesn’t have that context. All they have is what they see, and design is often the very first signal they receive about whether your business is credible, trustworthy and professional.

Imagine you run an engineering firm, so your audience most likely values competence, reliability and technical expertise. If your brand identity looks like it belongs on a boutique candle label, there’s a big problem. You might personally love the colour green and cursive typography, but your audience will look at that design and quietly wonder whether you’re actually capable of delivering industrial-grade engineering solutions.

Design only works when the perception it creates aligns with the expectations of the audience. This is why professional designers spend so much time thinking about positioning, tone and audience psychology. They are not simply arranging colours and fonts willy nilly, they are shaping how your business will be perceived by people who have never encountered it before. And that requires objectivity.

It also requires trust. When you hire a graphic designer, you are hiring someone who understands visual communication, typography, hierarchy and brand perception. Just as you wouldn’t expect a designer to walk into your business and start telling you how to run your operations, the same principle applies in reverse. You are the expert in your business, your designer is the expert in how that business should look and communicate to the outside world.

The most successful design projects happen when business owners contribute their insights about the audience, the goals and the strategy, and then trust the designer to translate that into an effective visual solution. Because good design is not about what the owner likes, it is about what the audience understands.

The Same Principle Applies to All Design

This doesn’t just apply to logos or brand identities. It applies to everything.

A campaign graphic needs to stop someone scrolling, a poster needs to communicate information instantly from several metres away, a social media tile needs to be legible on a phone screen, a website needs to guide the user effortlessly toward the next step.

These are functional requirements. If an event poster uses a thin, decorative type that becomes unreadable at a distance, it doesn’t matter how beautiful you think it is. It has failed. If a digital ad is so visually cluttered that nobody can tell what it’s promoting, it doesn’t matter how “creative” YOU think it looks. It’s not going to do its job.

Design is communication. If the message doesn’t land, the design isn’t working.

White Space Is Not Empty Space

Another common misunderstanding in design is the idea that more content equals more impact. Clients often see empty space and think something has gone wrong.

“Can we add something in here?”
“Maybe another image?”
“What if we just put a bit more text in that corner?”

But white space, or negative space, is not wasted space. It’s actually one of the most important tools in graphic design. White space gives the eye somewhere to rest. It creates hierarchy. It guides attention to the most important information. It allows the message to breathe. Without it, everything competes for attention at the same time. And when everything is shouting, nothing gets heard.

A poster crammed edge-to-edge with text, graphics, logos, icons and decorative flourishes doesn’t look impressive. It just looks garish and overwhelming. People won’t read it. They’ll glance at it for a milli-second, decide it’s too much effort, and move on.

German designer Dieter Rams, whose ideas have influenced everything from Braun products to Apple’s brand design, summarised this perfectly with one of his famous principles: “Good design is as little design as possible.”

Good design understands restraint. Good design is objective. And sometimes the most strategic decision a designer can make is what not to include.

Legibility Is Not a Suggestion

Typography is maybe one of the best examples of why design should always remain objective rather than subjective. You might find a highly decorative script font absolutely beautiful to look at. But if nobody can read it, it’s totally useless as a piece of design.

Even businesses with softer brand identities - florists, cafes, garden centres - still need signage, packaging and digital content that is immediately readable and memorable. Because at the end of the day, design needs to communicate information. This is why professional designers care deeply about things like spacing, contrast, hierarchy and readability. These aren’t fussy details. They are the mechanics and the science that make design function.

The Problem of Design Becoming Personal Preference

The real issues begin when design feedback becomes purely subjective. Statements like:

“Can we see it in some different colours?”
“Could we make it feel a bit… nicer?”
“I showed it to my friend and she said the font looks boring.”

None of these comments are constructive, and none actually address whether the design is doing its job and is appropriate for the target audience. They’re simply expressions of taste. And taste can be dangerously inappropriate when it comes to communication.

You might personally hate the colour orange. That doesn’t mean orange isn’t the ideal choice for a high-visibility campaign or a call-to-action button. You might think minimal typography looks ‘boring’. That doesn’t mean it isn’t exactly what a professional brand needs to communicate credibility. Design decisions should be evaluated against objectives, not opinions.

Design Is Problem Solving

One of the biggest misconceptions about graphic design is that it is art. It isn’t.

Art exists for expression. It can be interpreted in countless ways and is inherently subjective. A painting, for example, can provoke different emotions in different viewers and still be considered successful. Design operates very differently. Design exists to solve a communication problem.

Every design project begins with a brief, whether formal or informal. There is an objective end goal, there is an audience, there is a message that needs to land, and the designer’s job is to take all of those factors and translate them into a visual solution that works.

This is why professional designers spend so much time asking questions before they start designing; Who is the audience? What do they need to understand? What action should they take next? Where will this design appear? These questions are not creative indulgences, they are the foundations of effective design.

A successful piece of design is one that attracts the right audience, communicates clearly, and helps achieve the intended outcome, whether that is ticket sales, product purchases, event attendance or brand recognition.

In that sense, design is actually much closer to engineering than it is an art form. It requires creativity, of course, but creativity applied within rules and constraints. The layout must guide the eye, the typography must remain legible, the layout hierarchy must make information clear, and the visual tone must match the audience. Every decision contributes to the effectiveness of the message.

If a design achieves those objectives, it has succeeded. If it doesn’t, then something needs to change, but not because someone “doesn’t like it”, because it isn’t working.

The Only Question That Matters

After twelve years in the design industry, I’ve come to believe that most design discussions would improve dramatically if we replaced one question.

Instead of asking: “Do you like it?”, we should be asking: “Does it work?”

Because if the design connects with the audience, builds credibility, communicates clearly and achieves the objective, then the designer has done their job.

Even if someone in the meeting still wishes it was green.

Jess Aumonier is a brand and design expert, and the Creative Content Marketing Lead at Cemoh, Australia's fractional marketing network, connecting businesses with experienced fractional CMOs and marketing professionals. Find out more at cemoh.com.