The Design Process
Let’s not be clueless.
If you are reading this, you must’ve struggled with your design projects in the past. Whether it’s with onboarding a new client or revamping that initial design, you keep finding yourself to be clueless.
Let me paint you a scenario. You have recently taken up a logo design project. The client is happy with your proposal and wants you to move forward. They have given you an elaborate brief for what they want. Now what? You pick up your sketchbook and keep doodling till you are satisfied with the end results and then vectorize the best option. You put it in a creative mockup and present it only to find out that the client was expecting a different approach. They are not happy with your project and now adversely, you are not either. Now you are compelled to do the work at the last minute, burning the midnight oil. You are not as confident about your ability to complete the project anymore. And, the relationship between you and your client inevitably derails over the next few steps. So, what do you do? Well, you assess.
The process is more important than the outcome.
The process allows you to clarify the goals (outcome) and the steps you need to take to reach those goals. It outlines the answer to what, how, and when. It ensures that your critical and on-the-feet thinking is utilized for much bigger and more complex questions than ‘What do I do next?’.
When you do something over and over again, you owe it to yourself to find a better and more efficient way to do it. That’s where the process comes in. You start by tracing back the steps you took to complete a particularly successful project. Write down all the essential checkpoints (Discovery, Initial Briefing, Ideation, etc.). Then, try to create a framework that can fit all the upcoming projects. This will help you understand which task takes how much time to get completed.
Organizing your workflow in this way can also help maintain a formal relationship with your clients. If you don’t convey how much each of the tasks is going to take, the client will have to guess or in the worst cases, dictate the approach you take in order to fit within their deadlines.
Starting from discovery, our process framework can look something like this:
A. Discovery : We figure out what problem we are going to solve, estimate how much time it will take and derive an approach that is to be taken.
B. Initial Briefing: We brief the client on the approach that we came up with, and we address all the questions or objections that client might have.
C. Ideation: Based on the approach, we need to ideate the perfect solution for the problem.
D. First Draft: Presenting the first draft of our design that elaborates on what had been ideated. Here, we present to the client the first draft so as to make sure that we are on the right path.
E. Revision (if needed): Based on the client’s reviews, we make the revisions to our deliverables.
F. Second Draft: Here, we present our final work. Changes (if any) are addressed through another round of revision.
G. Final Handout: The project is successfully completed and we do the final handouts of the deliverables. Also, we don’t forget to assist our clients over how to use them.
H. Feedback: We never miss to take feedbacks from our clients as there is always room for improvements.
Although the process can change from time to time, the essence of the process (i.e. to guide us for the next steps) remains the same.
We hope that by now, you understand how powerful it is to inculcate a routine, a process into your creative life.
About the author
I am Aadarsh Pandey, co-founder and graphic designer at Humane Space LLP. Humane Space is a human-centric creative firm that specializes in brand and social media management.
