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After receiving the Design Brief, talking to your client, the next step is RESEARCH. How much research you do is dependent on the SCOPE of the job. For prospectus, annual reports, new identity, identity re-vamp, family of materials, major advertising campaigns and web sites you do everything listed below. For smaller projects your research in some areas may be minimal – bearing in mind that the more you do even for small projects, the better a reputation you will maintain for your studio.

Research

• If your client is established, research your client’s business or company, read their mission statement, find out what they are about. Pay special attention to their existing identity, and how they see themselves. If they have an identity or standards manual, make sure you know are familiar with it.
• Next (and this is where you jump in if your client’s business is new or they are re-vamping their entire identity), research your client’s major opposition, and what they are about. Also look into what similar companies are doing and where they succeed. Make some notes and sketches as to any fresh ideas you may come up with.
• Research the market as a whole, what are the trends? How can you improve your client’s situation with the work they want you to do for them. How inventive will that market allow you to be? Speculate. Remember you do not what to present them with brilliant modern works of art, if that is inappropriate to the market. This is often where designers fall down. They design on the basis of what they consider to be great works of art, and not what the client needs or want. Remember you are being hired as a service provider, so act like one. That does not mean that you do not bring flair, innovation and creative influence, it just means that you do it solely on the basis of the understanding of your client’s market.
• Research your service providers, and get several quotes along with a summation of the pros and cons from each. For example, with print media, which printer provides the most reliable service, what resolution are their machines, are they green friendly with their inks and process and so on, obtain samples. Which paper will you use and why? Again obtain samples. AND do not forget to obtain a range of quotations, this will be included in the client quotation from you. Do you need photography? Who will you use? What do they cost? Will you use an image library and so on… Get prices BEFORE you submit a tender or quote AND MAKE SURE EACH OF YOUR PROVIDERS CAN FIT WITHIN YOUR TIME-FRAME.
• Research your own work load, start writing down how long each stage of the job will take based on previous experience on similar jobs. DO NOT SELL YOURSELF SHORT. Come up with alternative time lines if Murphy’s Law (i.e. everything goes wrong) intervenes. All this will be part of your brief to your client. If you are new to this, ring a few design studios and tell them you are fresh out of college and need to know how long they take to do certain things.
• Make sure you take vigorous notes, get copies of samples from everyone, even your client. Start making notes on ideas, and how to go about them, make sketches. Setup a process that you follow every time you apply for new tenders or quotes, and stick to it. Get yourself a folder and throw all these notes and sketches in it. This will also serve as reference material for future work. There is a lot to do before you can start being creative. Also this process allows you to come up with a concept for your client far more simply. Don’t forget to add to these notes after the tendering process; what the client liked, disliked, where you went right or wrong… This will be invaluable in the future.

Get the routine right and you will have heaps of time, be able to manage your schedules, and produce a superior product. In a studio situation, work as a team, with each member taking on an aspect, and then coming together with regular meetings. For the sole contractor with a very heavy work load, this is where you can hire a work experience kid, or a family member who needs some work!

The business world works to time schedules and agendas. It doesn’t matter that the creative process does not automatically work like clockwork, a designer still needs to be able to produce a workable time-line, needs to explain the pros and cons of alternatives, and be able to produce a quotation based on reality without selling themselves or their clients short.

Design Brief from the client

It all starts with a design brief. If your client doesn’t give you one, organize a meeting, take notes, write it up, send it to your client, and get them to sign it. If the client provides you with a bad brief, organize a meeting, fill in the blanks, re-type it, send it to the client, and again get them to sign it. If the client won’t play the game, tell them you cannot assure them of a timely product and therefore will charge by the hour.

Every design brief should contain the following:

• SCOPE of the job. This includes the technical details and what they expect you to do in a nutshell. e.g. 1 x Annual report x 2 concepts: with 64-72 pages, colour, designer to organise and direct photography, liase with editor.. or Static web site, 3 levels, approximately 5 pages per level, photogallery, designer to organize and source all images… and so on. Get as many details as they can provide you with. If they don’t have an idea, tell them you will charge them a consult fee, so that you can both work out what is necessary – with the reason being that you cannot quote them if they don’t know what the final product will be. If it’s only a small job, then take the lead, make suggestions – usually the client will go along with your experience. You must decide on the scope, so if the job changes directions, you can inform your client that the job is now outside the scope of the job, and that you have to give them a new quote.
• MARKET. This means the target audience e.g. Annual report to serve as major marketing tool and is to be included with prospectus for future investor share portfolio or Web Site to show case information and share options, and serve as a marketing tool… age group 30-50s…
• STYLE. This also includes the project theme e.g. Annual report modern, business savvy, innovative, theme to centre around busy city…
• BUDGET (which enables you to determine who is going to print/host, and how many ‘bells and whistles’ you can include, what photographer etc). Some clients will not give you a budget so its up to you to quote for mid and upper range pricing.
• DEADLINE - when do they want the finished job by. Remember that printing may take up to 14 working days if you include varnishes, die shapes etc… And a complicated web site may eat up programming time…
• LIKES AND DISLIKES - The sooner you find this out the better, so why not get your client to include it in your brief. What colours do they like, what images, can they give you examples of reports or websites. All you have to do is then marry what they like, with what they need in terms of market, and you will have a happy client.

What comes next is in the next blog!

Something for Designers and their Clients….

Having been a graphic designer forever, a web designer of late, and in training where development is concerned, I have learnt a lot about the service designers provide, how to project manage, art direct, and train and new designers, having even lectured upon occasion both at university and at a high school level.

There is a huge gap between studying to be a designer, and living in the working world. Then there are a whole range of problems that confront design studios, not least of which is communication.

Equally many clients have problems with communication and designers and it’s a common complaint being made to feel out-of-touch, and that they do not understand their own business.

Likewise, many designers are made to feel like their expertise is being ignored, and though EVERYONE believes they can ‘design-it-themselves’, they do not realize that ‘taste’ needs to be objectified to suit the market, not based on subjective tastes.

In addition, I have been at the hard end of the stick with the ‘difficult client’ that gets stroppy that their millionth and one change has not been done immediately, and surely you missed their last edit, and no, they are only going to pay you the bare minimum, as you were foolish enough to quote generously. And in the end, they didn’t like what was given them, as they got exactly what they asked for and it looked horrible, or they DID like it and it looked horrible. Experience can be a hard task master, however there are MANY things you can do to make sure the relationship between you and your client is as positive as it can be, whilst retaining your own sense of joy in design.

Having learnt from the school of hard knocks how to provide a great service to clients, I have also learnt how to politely tell some clients that perhaps you are not the person they need… because let’s face it, we are not all compatible, be we can all be nice and make valued suggestions that help even the difficult client.

In this blog I will discuss the process involved with writing design briefs, tendering or quoting, meetings and so on. Eventually I will move to marketing and identity both for the client and for studios.

So the writing has begun. I welcome anyone who has a problem (either as the client, or the designer) to pose a question. The solution will be in the book, and everybody who gets in the book (make sure you include email contacts), gets the book and any future updates for nix. Fair?