Planning design around your business needs

Just because it’s a current trend or it’s what your competitors are doing doesn’t always mean it’s right for your business. As designers, this is why we ask questions to help you plan design around your business needs.

“Can you tell me why you need this?”

This is often a question I ask clients and it tends to come part and parcel with a followup question, something similar to, and “what’s the objective behind it or what are you hoping to achieve from this?”, These are similar questions when it comes to design can often be the difference between designing too brief where the client competes a form, submits it, and the designer effectively does what the client wants versus building the brief, which is when the designer works with the client to identify what they need.

We’re not in the business of trying to force you to do something you don’t want to, far from it. What we are trying to do is draw out what you need by asking questions. So when a designer asks, can you tell me why you need this brochure, be totally honest. If you’re answering “well, everyone has a brochure, so I guess we should have one as well”

Then think about what it will do for your business. If you need to sell more widgets then we need to understand more about your customers. What are their ages? What are their pain points? What are their needs and their challenges? If you produce a brochure, are your customers actually going to read it? If they’re of an age where a printed brochure isn’t if utterest to them, or you’re simply not going to be able to deliver it to them, but you know that they are visiting you on social media, then it may be worth more to your business to use elements from the brochure content and present it in a way they can consume it on social.

So maybe a series of videos or social media cards. Would that be a better use of your budget? So if I ask, can you tell me why? What I’m really saying is I’m not here to sell you something you don’t need. I’m here to help you create something that’ll help develop or build your business for the future. So don’t do something just because it’s a current trend or because your competitors are doing the same thing and you feel you need to keep up.

Think about your business and what’s going to give you the best return on your next design investment.