Process, process, process.
Both transparency and a good process are hugely important in building successful partnerships. Here, I have broken down my client and design process so you have clarity of what goes on and when it happens.
Client process
01
Kick off call
Before signing any dotted lines and paying any desposits, we hop on a quick 30 minute call to outline the full scope of the project, deliverables, timeframes, budgets, etc. Typically, these are all verbally agreed upon on this call.
02
Signed & sealed
I’ll send over a project proposal which details the deliverables and the quote we agreed upon on the call for you to sign off. Once approved, the contract, briefing template and 50% deposit invoices are shared. We can only progress once these have been signed, paid and filled out.
03
It’s design time!
Once I receive the signed contract, 50% deposit and the filled out brief with accompanying moodboard, I can begin my process. I will go through each stage of my design process below to get to a primary direction I believe best answers the brief.
04
Presentation
It’s now probably been two to three weeks since I received all I needed from you and I’m ready to present my work. In this presentation, I will walk you through every step of my design process explaining the rational behind each decision to ultimately get to one design at the end. I will also send you the deck afterwards so you can refer back to it when pulling together feedback.
05
Final or feedback
Although tricky, it’s really important to let all the information I’ve presented to you sink in for a day or two at least before providing any consolidated feedback. Depending on the level of amends required (if there are any), I may send them over on email or I’ll present to you if it requires more work and explanation.
06
Sign off!
After you’ve signed off the design, I’ll share the final invoice and once that has been paid, I’ll send over all the files and exports in an extremely organised folder system for you to use immediately. I like to check in with my clients a couple of months after we complete our project to see how you’re getting on, so keep an eye out for me!
My design process
01 Breaking down the brief & research
Once you’ve shared your brief and moodboard, I begin my process by deeply analysing both documents. This eventually allows me to distill the brief down to nine key success metrics for us to use to later asses the work. I’ll then dive into thorough research to fully understand the external challenges of your brand covering your industry, competitor analysis and audience demographics.
02 Word mapping
More often than not, there will be words in the brief that stick out from the rest. Word mapping is a fantastic way to take these key words and expand on them finding related words or ways to express them visually. This process will immediately spark ideas and further build on my understanding of your brand from the brief and research stage.
Here’s a deeper look into how I word map.
03 Initial ideas
Ideas will have already started firing throughout the last two stages and now I can start to execute. This stage is ideally done very quickly; chicken-scratching as many ideas down and as fast as possible with no real precision. Once I feel I’ve exhausted all directions, I’ll go back through the pages and highlight any diamonds in the rough to explore further in the next stage.
04 Idea development
By this point, I will have selected 5-10 strong ideas to develop and refine. I’ll usually redraw these ideas several times to see if there are better ways to execute them before taking them digital. Once I have a few refined sketches I will take them to the computer to vectorise. More often than not, one idea will be shouting at me as the winner and it’s this idea I’ll start working up with colour, type, patterns, etc.
05 Presentation
Now I have the design complete that best answers your brief and mission, I will build out the brand further into industry specific mock ups so you can really see how your brand will take shape in the real world. I’ll then begin crafting an extensive presentation taking you through each stage of my process, why I made one decision over the other, etc. which I’ll take you through on a video call.
06 Final or feedback
After receiving your consolidated feedback, I’ll refine the design further if needed or in the rare case, create a new option. This will be wrapped up in another presentation if the changes are significant. Once approved, I’ll work on any further assets we agreed on earlier in the process, e.g. brand guidelines, branded assets, packaging, etc. We’ll then have subsequent calls to go through any new work following the same approval process until we’ve signed off all the deliverables and you’re ready to take the world by storm!
If you have a question or would like to enquire about working together please get in contact here.