Our tips for working with a designer

Graphic designers have an amazing talent for bringing content to life visually while creating professional materials that are appealing and reflect your brand and style. 

We work with graphic designers all the time at True North and we know the detail designers need and how to streamline the process, so we’ve provided a few tips so that getting visual materials designed is a straightforward and cost effective process for everyone involved.

Figure out your needs first

Is the design intended for web? Or for print? Is it corporate? Should it adhere to existing branding? A good way to figure out your needs is to write a creative brief. A brief essentially outlines the scope and deliverables of a project and includes timelines and a budget. Knowing what you want and need before approaching the designer can streamline the process, as it helps the designer understand what you want right from the start.

Not knowing what you want is also okay. This can be discovered in collaboration with the designer, but a creative brief can help you consider your requirements and convey what you want to achieve, to kickstart conversations with the designer.

Keep it simple

There are often multiple people working on a single project. A great tactic is to assign one person as the primary point of contact with the designer. This ensures the designer receives consistent direction or information throughout the process.

Most designers welcome feedback from numerous sources on one project, but a great way to simplify things is to have the primary contact collate all the feedback into one document and provide it as one round of changes. This will also save you time and money. 

Show and tell

If you have seen other designs you like or have examples of the look and feel you want, provide those to the designer so they understand what your vision for the final product is.  

The difference is in the detail

Some of the key things that designers will need to complete a project are logos, images, branding style guides, and of course the written content. The earlier you provide these to a designer, the sooner they can make a start on your project. Delays in providing these can make it more difficult to meet the deadline. It can also be good practice to collate all these elements into one folder for quick and easy access.

Time is money

Try to provide final, approved written content to the designer at the start of the project. Once you provide the content to the designer, they will plan the layout and design around this. Subsequent changes to the content could mean the designer needs to reconfigure the entire layout, which will require more time, and possibly incur additional costs.

Keep it short and simple

Some designers will specify how many rounds of changes they will provide (generally one or two, but it depends on the project and the designer) before extra costs are incurred. This is normally outlined in the initial quote.

When you review a design, if you collate all the feedback into one document for the designer, this will only count as a single round of changes, which makes things simpler, faster and cheaper.

Engaging a designer can be a simple and cost effective process and best of all, you end up with a beautifully designed document that reflects your business or organisation’s style and branding.  

If you haven’t worked with a designer before or you just don’t have the time, you might consider engaging a communication agency (like True North) to help.We work with a variety of design partners and can manage the whole process, from your initial idea, writing the content, briefing and liaising with the designer, all the way through to the final product.