Graphic Design Workflow: A Step-By-Step Guide
It’s good practice to have a graphic design workflow when working with a client or business. The graphic design workflow provides you with a step-by-step process you can follow to achieve an objective.
It’s essentially a checklist for the creative process.
The graphic design workflow will help you better manage a project and hopefully ensure your final deliverable consistently exceeds the clients’ expectations. Having that process in place is especially important when you’re managing a large team of designers.
Read on to learn how to create a graphic design workflow you can utilize at your company.
1. Review the Design Brief
At the start of a project, you need your design brief.
Your creative brief contains the essential information you need for the project to progress. The brief should be no more than two pages.
Assuming you are working with a client, rather than creating graphics for the business you work for, here are some essential things you should have access to before kicking things off:
- Background Information: basic information about the client, their niche, and their customer base/ customer personas. You also want to know who to contact if you have any questions.
- Competitor Information: you want a list of the companies operating in the same sector as your client.
- Project Goals: how does the client plan to use the work, and what do they hope to achieve? It’s also good to know how the client will measure the success of your work.
- Brand Guidelines: you need to know what font you can use for written content, how large their logo should be, the brand color scheme, etc.
- Timescale: you’ll need access to the timeline for the project. You also want access milestones.
The creative brief should answer who, what, why, when, where, and how. It provides an overview that you can work from. Here’s a nice example of a creative brief template as a reference point.
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2. Research the topic & meet the client
Once you’ve received your brief, schedule a meeting with the client.
Set aside time to do the necessary research before the client meeting. This research is a chance to show how professional you are. You can gather relevant information that will help you deliver amazing work.
Research on what the client does and their past designs. It’s also a good idea to look at what their competitors have done. Check out the types of designs their target audience usually responds well to. Nowadays, you don’t have to look any further to gain access to that kind of information. Almost all the data you’ll need is online.
The meeting with a client is a chance to cover the project goals, agree on the timeline, and ask probing questions. Go further than the marketing blah-blah and find out what the client wants.
You might also use your meeting to share a couple of ideas you might have. A face-to-face meeting is a great chance to get that immediate feedback. You can often tell by someone’s face if your idea receives client approval.
3. Brainstorm ideas and create a mood board
Once you feel like you have a good grasp of the client’s wants, gather all your team members and start brainstorming. But don’t just write those ideas down. Instead, create a mood board.
A mood board is a collage of concepts and your vision to execute a project.
It can have both images and text. It’s a place where you can gather together ideas and concepts for the project. If you’re working as a team, the mood board can be collaborative.
The mood board should help you come up with ideas for how to go forward with the project. If you’re working as a team, it’s a good idea to arrange a meeting after your mood board is finished. That way, you can brainstorm the next steps for the project.
You can use a weekly schedule template to organize your team, set deadlines, and arrange meetings.
4. Sketch the ideas
You’ve now completed the research and inspiration part of the project. The next step is creative; it’s time to start designing.
Sketching is a great hands-on approach for quickly exploring concepts. I’ve found that sketching for one or two hours helps me come up and work through design ideas. It’s a bit like visual brainstorming.
Sketching can be an essential step in the design process.
Many designers incorporate sketching into their graphic design workflow. Take designer Karley Barrett as an example. Barrett will sketch over 60 designs as she tries to come up with an idea.
Here’s a snapshot of logo variations she created for a client.
After sketching over 60 designs, she shortlisted a handful of potential designs.
Once you have your sketches, you can select which ones you like best. Or, you could share the designs with the client. I recommend creating a shortlist of options first, though. Present 60 design variations to an indecisive client is a recipe for trouble.
Spend time fleshing out the designs that you like. You could make finer hand-drawn designs or create computerized versions of those design variations.
5. Get client feedback
Even if you think you already have the best design for your client, you can’t settle on that one and start designing the final output. You need to involve the client at this stage in the process again and get their feedback first. Ultimately, your work should meet the client’s standards, not just yours.
Show the client your best designs and let them pick what they feel will work for them. If your client picks a final design from the different variations you showed, then good for you. You’re one step closer to creating the final output. Sometimes the client will reject all of your designs, which is frustrating.
Chances are, though, that you’ll still have to make modifications on a design even if your client picks a variation from your shortlist. So, if you’re meeting the client personally, bring with you your pen and paper or anything you need to take down notes. You can also email the shortlist to your client, if that’s their preference.
If you’re doing the first option, make sure you pay attention to everything the client says. There’s no such thing as an irrelevant comment. Every detail counts.
That’s not to say you can no longer express opinions. If your client wants something changed but you think it’s not a good idea, then say so. You’re creative so you should provide constructive feedback. But if you voice an opinion and the client still says no, you have no choice but to follow their request. Don’t impose.
6. Revise the designs after feedback
Don’t jump into revising right after the client has provided their initial comments.
Often people have an immediate reaction that changes after they thought about and reviewed the project again. Give the client enough space to formulate their thoughts into a cohesive response. Then, review and confirm the changes they’re requesting.
You might need to go through several rounds of revision with a client. It’s a good idea to change one or two elements at a time. That way, you should reduce the amount of feedback during each round of revision.
When revising the design based on your client’s feedback, resist the urge to do the opposite of what they said just because you think it doesn’t look good.
As the creative lead, that can be hard to do. But if you bear in mind that your ultimate goal is to please the client, not yourself, then you’ll do the right thing. Besides, if the final design based on the client’s feedback ends up looking that bad, your client will be the first to point it out when you show it to them. They’ll be the first to tell you to modify the design again.
Following these clear steps will help you structure and pace the project. That makes things easier for the client and less stressful for you.
Also Read: https://www.proofhub.com/articles/design-feedback-tools
7. Delivering the final product
After you made the necessary changes, it’s time to deliver the final product.
But before you do that, go back to your notes during the feedback stage one last time and check the final output. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Did you and your team manage to incorporate all of your client’s feedback?
- How does the final product look? Will it impress?
- Does the final product embody all the client’s expectations specified in the creative brief?
If you answered yes to all those questions, then your final output is ready for delivery. Make sure you save it in a format the client can access. Check your brief if the client specified what format they want. If they didn’t, the usual formats are JPG and PNG.
You might need to provide the software format alongside the final piece. For example, you would share a PSD file if you worked in PhotoShop. Providing the client with an editable file means their design team can change the final design if needed.
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In Conclusion
If you don’t have a concrete graphic design workflow just yet, then start creating one. A set graphic design workflow helps you ensure efficiency and productivity. It also helps ensure the output you and your team come up with is of excellent quality.
Familiarize yourself with the process. In this article, you learned the steps to a graphic design workflow that works. Make sure your team members do that, too.
When you have a set workflow, you’ll see how quickly you can get things done without compromising the quality of your final product. You’ll be happy with the results. Your client will be, too!
About Author:
Owen Jones is the Senior Content Marketer at ZoomShift, an online schedule maker app. He is an experienced SaaS marketer specializing in content marketing, CRO, and FB advertising. He likes to share his knowledge with others to help them increase results.
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