Top Digital Design Agencies in Singapore

Digital design has a direct impact on the things we see and do every day. The products we use every day have had a digital designer involvement in one or more ways. This discipline contributes significantly to a variety of applications. It can be web ad product design, 3D animation modeling, and web architecture, and the like.

Digital designers are nothing like the average graphic designer. Lately, they’re in high demand, given their proficiency in digital and traditional design systems.

Whether you’re new to the graphic design world or you’re an expert looking to refine your skills, it’s easy to get confused by the design terminologies and descriptions. You’re probably confused by the digital design concept and what it entails. Before you stop to look at the jobs you can find as a digital design guru; it’s important to understand digital design in its entirety.

What Is Digital Design?

Digital design refers to the process of creating content that is viewed through a screen. The screen can be a computer, tablet, or smartphone screen.

The digital design discipline has a breadth of its own. It entails a myriad of roles and functions that are interconnected through the design function. Although design touches on content that users interact with on websites or apps, digital design roles cater to different elements.

The broader description of digital design relates to the creation of content, including 2D and 3D animations, digital presentations, social media content, digital billboards, and signage, among others.

Essentially, creating these multimedia content requires a designer with an elaborate skillset. Graphic designers need programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. They require languages such as CSS3, JavaScript, and HTML5.

The Difference between a Digital Designer and Graphic Designer

The necessary design skills and concepts used in either discipline seem to overlap. However, there are distinct differences between them.

Graphic Designers come with Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign knowledge. They focus on logo design, brochure, and pre-print production. Also, they handle typography, poster design, and images.

On the other hand, digital designers can handle a basic designer’s tasks and more sophisticated design work. Their digital proficiency enables them to create website designs, apps, animation 2D, and 3D modeling, among others.

What Is a Digital Designer?

A digital designer is a design expert with graduated technical aptitude and visual creativity. But what do digital designers do? The primary role of a digital designer is to leverage his/her technical and inventive skills to produce digital graphics.

They can create digital graphics for computer games websites and 2D/3D brochure. Also, they create special effects for movies and the like.

Other designers use their skills to create and animate graphics for training videos and tutorials. It’s a never-ending list since other designers will collaborate with visual artists to conceptualize, develop prototypes, and improve the look of existing graphics on a site.

Types of Digital Designers

Digital designers are classified as follows.

Graphic Designers

Though it sounds generic, graphic designers are experts who primarily work with static images. They can create infographics, tables, or a digital illustration. They focus on content aesthetics, branding, and readability.

Web Designers

Web designers are involved with website layouts and the interactive elements that come with sites. They need to be conversant with coding and site/app functionality. They should be on top of emerging web trends while focusing on site accessibility and user-friendliness.

UX Designers

UX designers are concerned with website usability. They create wireframes for sites, apps, and web-related products. UX experts partner with market researchers to come up with different versions of a site to test it before launch. They emphasise on data and design aesthetics.

Interaction designers

An interaction designer works around how users interact with products. They seek to understand behavior, user intentions, and goals. Interaction is a critical component of UX and UI design. It means that UX and UI designers can handle the roles of an interaction designer.

Top 20 Digital Design Agencies in Singapore

Benefits of Becoming a Digital Designer

• You enjoy a broad skillset- digital designers can juggle graphic design, videography, photography, and animation expertly.
• You will enlarge your network:- designers work collaboratively, and they meet experts from diverse backgrounds
• Work as an employee or your own boss- designers can opt to freelance, or they can work under a contract.
• Immense career development opportunities
• Polish your creativity and analytics skills.

How to Create a Digital Design Strategy for Business

Successful businesses in Singapore know best about making digital design a part of their overall business strategy. With design in the mix, it saves you money, and it creates a better customer experience

What is A Design Strategy?

A design strategy refers to the long or short term plan of incorporating design to inch closer to your business/ROI goals. It collaborates with other business-critical strategies like marketing, IT, or strategy to achieve better outcomes.

The ideal plan should:

• Define the target audience, messaging, and value proposition
• Define how your business objectives are related to the design elements
• itemize your core brand elements
• Display what value design will inject to your products, services, and clients

How to Use Design Strategically

Even though you’re not a fully-fledged design expert, it’s still possible to leverage design in your flavour. Here’s how you can exploit design:

• Find out where design is being used in your business
• Assess ways of enhancing the design process by hiring a professional digital design consultant
• Identify areas that could improve with a new design approach
• Incorporate design factors in your future plans and operations
• Conducting market research to understand user needs

If you want to know whether you’re exploiting design in an optimised manner, consider a targeted audit. This will help in reshaping the design approach to resonate with user needs and experiences.

How to Keep Up with Digital Design Trends

Graphic designers get caught in a rut when they stick to their comfort zones. The discipline keeps evolving. The only way a designer can remain relevant is by keeping up with the pace of emerging trends in the market. Here’s how:

Never stop reading

Reading new material on graphic design will notify you of the latest happenings and trends. You can follow some popular graphic design blogs, sign up for newsletters or magazines to expand your knowledge.

Keep learning

Although you graduated with top honors in graphic design, consider online resources to keep brushing your subject matter knowledge. Online courses and tutorials will suffice.

Network and community

Graphic designers enjoy numerous, including self-created networks. Consider joining a platform of fellow designers on or offline.

Teach your skill

If you’re an expert, you can composer training upcoming designers as a way of keeping it fresh. You can teach at a local college or create online tutorials.

Tips for Choosing Professional Graphic Designers

Ask for a portfolio

The best digital graphic designers present their portfolios without hesitation. Always check whether the samples are authentic, professional, and with visual integrity.

Check whether they’re affiliated

A designer who follows a set code of conduct is likely to deliver legally accepted results. Also, they are likely to guarantee authenticity, and they will use an ethical approach in the design process.

Go for an ambitious designer

Designers whose work is well out of your comfort zone will give you an edge. They propose designs that are futuristic such that you don’t have to keep tweaking and modifying.

Look for versatility

The graphic designer you pick needs to display their adeptness in designing on a cross-platform basis. They need to have top coding and site testing skills on different browsers.

Check the contract

Some designers insert sneaky clauses in the working contracts. Others want to retain design ownership, and it could affect your bottom line. Before you hire, always scope out the deal.

Digital designer duties

A web designer is charged with creating a mockup of what the final site or app will look like. They determine the layout, fonts, color icons button, and visual themes to use. Their duties are:

• Designing full web pages websites and apps
• Designing site navigation
• Conceptualizing mobile responsive web interfaces that work well on all screens
• Coding and styling pages or site using HTML/ CSS
• Supervision of entire projects and coordinating teams and clients

UX designer

A UX designer is more about user interaction than type facing and layout. They concentrate on how a user feels about site elements. Their duties are:

• Initiating user research and applying the findings to craft the right UX strategy and design.
• Building design prototypes and piloting product testing
• Liaising with clients/stakeholders about the development and testing process
• Crafting navigation schemes, user journey and site maps
• User research and interviews
• Managing data models according to user research

UI designer

A UI or a User Interface designer works around the user’s experience with the interface. These designers contribute significantly to make the experience as seamless as possible.

Their duties are:

• Designing and A/B testing product interfaces and pages
• Synchronizing product interface/layout with a UX strategy
• Designing prototypes and product style guides
• Creating and testing interface elements
• Ensuring interactions match user research results

Digital Design Skills Required For Success in the Singapore Marketplace

In Singapore, digital designers can unlock the potential of your company’s digital strategy. They help your business to leverage a positive user experience to drive your ROI through measurable metrics.

Singaporeans businesses need to assess several digital design skills before enlisting new talents. They include:

Outstanding Soft Skills

The best digital designer needs to hold a range of non-tech skills. The best results in this sector are a product of collaboration. The designer requires excellent communication, teamwork, and flexibility skills.

InDesign, Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop skills

Though digital, a designer needs exceptional proficiency in core graphic design tools. The design landscape calls for proficiency in the Adobe platform.

HTML

Designers with adept HTML skills are priceless. The ability to wireframe and design web pages simultaneously makes it easy to fix problems instantly. Many Singaporean clients require their design experts to be HTML compliant.

UI design

Designing the look, feel, and interactivity of the interface that users interrelate with is a coveted skill. Other than the capacity to code in HTML or Java, a designer needs to display the ability to build responsive websites and apps.

User Experience Design

The UX experience refers to how a user feels when they visit a website. Ux designers need to have skills that enable them to guarantee user satisfaction. They need to be creative when crafting site simplicity and the delight effect when a user checks the product’s interface.

Graphic Design Trends You Need To Know In Singapore For 2020

Whether you’re a devoted graphic designer or a Singaporean business looking for digital design solutions, it pays to learn how new trends are likely to impact your growth. Here are some trends to watch:

The popularity of clean, geometric designs

Clean, geometric designs come with a visual appeal and a trendy look. Designers are going for the intuitive lines and perspective given the potential of these elements to direct users where they want to “go”.

AI is driving Web Accessibility

In Singapore, web and mobile design teams are increasingly going for accessibility. The idea is to get users to access info seamlessly. Given that access on websites or apps isn’t easy, designers are going for AI solutions that make accessibility 1-2-3 easy. AI helps update the site and keeps them compliant as soon as changes are made.

Website overlays disappear

Website overlays or pop-ups are unnecessary distractions in the digital design field. Though they interrupt users, they’re commonplace. Today, designers are opting for holistic Customer experience and conversion instead of distractive overlays.

Speed readers bombarding digital design

Digital speed reading apps aren’t a new occurrence. Designers are more conscious of the unpredictable and short human attention span. These apps are becoming the go-to solution for entities that want users to read through their content, especially on small screens.

The Rise of Street Art Inspired Designs

Street art designs of yesteryears are becoming the inspirational fad for digital designers in 2020. Their authentic and original themes seem to resonate with designers and users alike. Businesses looking for new attention and clients are now leveraging popular street art to achieve to this end.

Unique and exciting fonts

Incorporating distinctive and exciting fonts into your brand’s design is one way to revitalise your visuals in 2020. Many designers and businesses are in favor of these fonts, given their appeal and their money-saving aspect from a design perspective. Also, customised fonts are the perfect elements for a company looking reposition.

Minimalist designs

The minimalist look has gained preference since the minimally-designed backgrounds empower your brand with visual potential. Designers are now in favor of copious amounts of white space that allows your brand images and text to breathe.

The Cost of Digital Design in Singapore

Determining the cost of digital designers in Singapore depends on some factors. Some considerations determine the designer you’ll pick for your graphic design project. These include

• Your niche
• The scope of business and your capacity to do it in-house
• Your graphic design workload and project intervals
• What you prefer-freelancers or established design firms

Other price factors

• Requisite Consultation hours
• The complexity of the design and the man-hours required.
• Designer agency Experience and Reputation
• Your ballpark budget

Pricing

At the lowest, Singaporean digital graphic designers will charge from as little as SGD$60 to SGD$250 and beyond. The prices go up if your project is complicated and time-consuming.

The Importance of Digital Graphic Design

Digital design is not only essential in business circles. It helps to create a superior first impression on potential customers. It’s that impression that tells whether a client will stick to your brand or not.

Enhances sales

Exceptionally crafted digital designs will drive your sales curve up. People fall in love with great visuals. It’s easy to deduce the message form a thought-provoking 3d ad. With perfect digital designs, your customers will keep coming back.

Establishes your brand’s name

Enticing digital Graphic designs help a brand to stand out in a given industry.. A captivating ad or digital billboard rings in the mind of a customer every time they require your kind of service or product. Savvy graphics enhance brand recognition and recall.

Fosters customer goodwill

Perfectly created graphics with a wow-effect instill confidence in a customer. If the design elements connect with a buyer’s emotions, they end up building faith in your products and loyalty with the brand.

Conveys brand message

Graphic design delivers defined brand messages to a targeted audience precisely. The work of the designer is to analyse the particular message that a design approach needs to deliver. It’s the brand message that makes the design meaningful. Then the designer elects specific themes and colours that arouse a buyer’s emotions. The emotive message ends up as the brand message for a targeted audience.

Inspires competency

Graphic design can help a business to foster a competitive facet for staff, clients, and suppliers. If the digital designs are top-notch, it sends a message that the company operates professionally.