If you’ve ever had to hire the wrong graphic designer for your project, then you know how tedious things can get. Graphic Designers are great people and this blog is not to bash them at all. Working with the right graphic design team can make a huge difference in your design outcome and save you time and money. We have a network of more than a dozen Graphic Designers on our team, so we love them.
Handling back and forth, reliability and integrity issues are crucial aspects of a successful collaboration. Most small businesses we’ve worked with have unfortunately been burnt before by dishonest Graphic Designers, leading to wasted time, resources, and frustration. Therefore, establishing a transparent and trustworthy partnership is our top priority.
Here are five steps to ensure your graphic design project comes out to your satisfaction.
1. Ideation
This is where it all starts. Knowing what it is that you want to achieve creatively or having some semblance of idea goes a long way into helping the designers to get a clear picture. Having references, sketches, photos and other items that can be visible to the team is super helpful. Ideas can be transformed into concept and then reality. Draft out the concept of your idea and share it with your design team to begin the planning process.
2. Planning
Normally the planning begins with the ideas and concepts you submit. Working with a Project Manager or Lead Graphic Designer, ensures that what you wish to communicate is understood between both parties. Questions relating to your brand bible, your design goals, sizes, formats, print or digital usage, die-line or bleeds and budget will be asked during this stage of the process. Once there is clarity and confirmation in your request, the documentation is then developed and shared with the team to begin working.
3. Designing
The graphic design team get to work by preparing a few drafts of the design for revision. Usually each of these drafts take a different form or perspective but maintain the same underlining concept in the original request. Depending on the design complexity, a range of graphic designers will be used to propose different takes on the same concept. This is good for the client, because they get to see more drafts not from one graphic designer but from others who might have an interesting proposal for the graphic design. Client saves an enormous amount of time in this process as they don’t have to find all these designers to work on their project. By working with one project management team or company, that team will do all the work in getting your graphic design concept to life across any number of graphic designers.
4. Revision
This is the step where you become involved again to determine the progress of your graphic design request. You get to lay all the critiques down and narrow the graphic designs that best satisfies your initial request. There is no need to rush here because of the importance in getting this part right. What’s good about this step is the opportunity to shape the direction of the graphic design the way you want it. The design team will take those feedback and implement them accordingly and you will get to review the updated versions again until you are completely satisfied. Most graphic designers only allow up to 3 revisions and that can be attributed to the possibility to draw the design process out too long for the client. So ensure you take enough time to review and think through the design drafts presented. Graphic Designers can also work with your printing company if the goal is to print. This will help in confirming the printing requirements before the final draft is given. At the end of the day, this will be your design and should represent you to the fullest.
5. Final Approval
The final approval stage comes after every revision is viewed and all the necessary feedback has been considered or made into effect. Upon approval of the final draft, the design team will prepare the files in various design formats such as .ai .jpg .png .pdf based on how you plan to use the graphic design.
Graphic designing can be fun and creative if done right. For over 5 years MI Group’s Graphic Media Unit (GMU) have been working with clients across different industries to create the perfect design. If you need frequent reliable and efficient creative designs, contact us to learn how you can sign-up for our Unlimited Graphic Design Offer for one flat monthly payment.