Is your business in desperate need of a better graphic design process? We understand the struggle of perfecting the design process. It is not an overnight job that is easy to do. In fact, it can take a few weeks to master changes and get an entire department or organization running more efficiently. While the task may seem daunting, read on to discover the steps you can take to greatly improve your design workflow and streamline the process at the same time.
Every Graphic Design Process Needs a Strategy
Cultivating a great plan is the best way to get a great design. To start off, ask yourself, what is our goal? You can’t have a good plan without a clear goal. To be effective, you have to work toward something achievable and realistic. From here, you can start to pinpoint what it is you want to transform within your graphic design process. For instance:
Do you want a faster turnaround for projects?
Are you looking for higher quality designs?
Do you want more efficient communication between designers and marketers?
These are all very real questions that can lead to achievable goals.
Graphic Design Step by Step Process
We know that you can’t have a successful process without a goal. A great starting point is formulating a realistic and achievable goal. Once you are ready to move on, you can begin constructing a creative process.
Step One: Gaining a Clear Picture
Have a clear overview of what you expect the graphic designer should be accomplishing. This may include special requests or your comments and ideas. Be sure that the design direction has specific details, like color, shape, and size of a request.
The more information you provide, the better the final product will be. Set your graphic designer up for success. Provide a platform for open communication with the designer and their team.
One good way to capture this detail upfront is to have the client fill out a questionnaire or creative brief. This can serve as a starting road map for the design team.
Step Two: Planning
Once the idea is clear, start planning and roughing out ideas. This is the rough draft phase. Let this be the time to brainstorm. Mistakes shouldn’t be a concern right now.
The point of this step is to get a clearer idea of what the final product will look like. It helps to put on a paper what you’ve only seen in your head. This might look different than what you have been envisioning. Brainstorming gives you the opportunity to keep or change what works and doesn’t.
Step Three: Creative Process and Editing
This is when the designer starts to create the product. Set up a plan to give your approval or make changes before they invest a lot of time making something you won’t like. After designing and creating, have them edit their work. Have your team work together with the designers to catch mistakes and fix them. The more communication there is, the fewer rounds of revisions there will be, saving you both time and money.
Step Four: Final Approval
This is the best part and the one you have been waiting for. The final product should be the final step. This should be a clear presentation of the project with no mistakes in the design. Once you gain management approval, the design process is complete. The project is ready to go to market!
Effective Management
A strategy for you and your design team won’t work without proper management. Every design project needs effective time and resource management by both the client and the designers. And being active in managing this overall relationship is what will make or break the project.
Another thing to remember is that technology is always changing. There have been many enhancements in recent years that provide great efficiency to the design process, for both the client and the design team. Embrace these technologies and consider just some of the ways that they will improve the process. This would include:
Assuring clear communication between the design team and the client
Balancing workflow amongst the team so no one has an overwhelming amount of tasks
Managing the timeline
Making sure the end product delivers the solution to the client’s marketing challenge
These are just a few of the factors to consider when looking to streamline and enhance the design process for your marketing projects. Still, these are very important elements that will affect productivity for both the client and the designers.
In the end, adopting and adhering to an efficient two-way process will provide time savings, on target design, and cost efficiencies to make sure you’re always on budget!