A Guide For Organizing The Graphic Design Process

At the same time as being an art form, graphic design aims to portray a message to viewers and to help sell a product or a service. It is for these reasons that it is important for designers to have a system in place that enables them to finish the project much faster, to keep the whole process as organized as possible, and to achieve better results at the project’s close. This guide is only one way of organizing the process, but it is highly effective on all accounts:

1. Collect Information
The first step of the process doesn’t include any graphic design work whatsoever; instead, you need to gather all of the necessary information (usually from the client). You need to know who the target audience is, what the exact message that the client wishes to portray is, what the technical requirements are, what the budget is, and what sort of deadline you are looking at.

2. Proposal, Quote, Contract and Plan
Like step one, step two doesn’t include any graphic design work. To speed this part up, most companies will already work from document templates that they have devised (the proposal, however, will have to be mostly customised for each client and project). The plan is similar to the proposal, but is for the designer’s records.

3. Brainstorm, Research and Inspiration
Now you can get to the more interesting bit – research some projects completed by your client’s competitors, take some time out to find some inspiration in life (through reading, visiting museums, and so on), and brainstorm your ideas as they come. This will actually organise your thoughts and help to finish the process faster.

4. Try Something Different
After searching for all this inspiration and doing all this research, you’ve probably come up with some new ideas that you never thought of using before. Try a few new techniques or styles to see where they take you or where they can improve your work.

5. Revision
One of the most hated steps in the graphic design process is the revision phase because this is when clients come in and want to make changes to the project. To make things easier, present the client with a few different options – they can opt to mix and match or make changes to individual designs this way.

Organizing the process should be one of the highest priorities for anyone who works in the graphic design industry, as this will not only make the process run much smoother, it will enable you to finish faster and to achieve the best results possible. Even if you don’t like all steps of the process (such as the paperwork or revision phases), remember that they are all necessary parts of the whole.