What is the design process?
When utilizing DesignerWhere for graphic design services, our process is designed to bring your vision to life while maintaining stringent quality standards and cost-effectiveness. Here's an overview of how we achieve this:
1. Design brief – setting out the goals and strategy of your design project
The starting point for your design process is the design brief, an essential foundation that shapes the trajectory of your project's digital design journey.
Within this brief, you establish the project's goals and strategies, laying the groundwork for its execution. Crafting it requires meticulous attention to detail and clear, direct communication.
We ensure that this document is concise, limited to no more than two pages. Its purpose is to articulate the project's vision and essential criteria, guiding the design path ahead.
2. Research phase – learning about the market or users we’re designing for
Quality research stands as the cornerstone of nearly everything in this world, and the same holds true for design. Understanding the market landscape, your competitors, and the audience engaging with your design is pivotal, simplifying your tasks significantly.
Moreover, robust graphic design research doesn't just inform; it propels you toward innovative paths and serves as a wellspring of inspiration, enriching the design process.
To refine and enhance the design research process we analyze what your competitors are doing in the same field - we take advantage of their strengths, and learn from their weaknesses, enabling your business or product to stand alone.
- We establish specific criteria to gauge and measure your competitors effectively.
- We can engage directly with your competitors' customer base to grasp their preferences and pain points.
- We dive into reviews to comprehend public sentiments about your competition.
- We explore how your competitors present themselves on social media, evaluating their look and vibe.
Implementing these strategies, we lay a robust foundation for your design requirements.
3. Concepts – brainstorming ideas
We use a mix of new and old technology - whether it's using Penultimate on an iPad, or old-school paper and pen - we brainstorm multiple ideas using a mixture of our 20 years of experience, competitor analysis, contemporary ideas and themes. We from these into our Concepts Folder to help you understand and add input at an early stage to see if there is a particular direction you want designs to head towards.
4. Concept development – polishing and refining ideas
Once the brainstorming wraps up and we've all agreed on the general design idea and direction, it's time to finesse the finer points. This stage is where our skills truly shine as we craft something that's both aesthetically pleasing and practical.
- We get experimental like a mad professor! We explore a wide array of colours, layouts, and styles until we find what resonates best with your brand and current design ethos.
- We use the overnight test – letting ideas rest overnight; fresh eyes in the morning often lead to new insights.
- Seek feedback from others – we'll dive deeper into this in the next step!
5. Design review – getting feedback on the ideas
A design review serves as a structured avenue for gathering valuable feedback iterations of design.
Throughout the review stages, our designers showcase their concepts to your stakeholders, seeking insights on potential improvements.
6. Iterate – improving design through feedback
At each stage of the process, you can submit feedback and ideas to help move the design project forwards. All feedback is noted within our online platform ensuring your ideas and direction gets incorporated within the design process - and all feedback is logged enabling efficient and pragmatic tracking.
7. Approve – sign-off
Once the design has gone through the initial stages, the development, then review stages, the last drafts are cleaned and tidied up ready for final approval from you, the client.
8. Release - user testing and feedback for future updates
When the design has been signed off, we can offer continue tweaking or improvements, along with analyzing feedback, to continual improve the design in the future.