7-Step Process All Designers Should Follow To Complete Every Project

As a graphic designer, you know your job entails helping your client sell their service or product. Your ultimate goal is to help viewers understand a message and, in turn, reap benefits for your client. Developing a process to follow each time you take on a new project can help tremendously in achieving results you and your client are happy with. Whether you’re a graphic designer, web designer, programmer or otherwise, having a system set up will help you get the work done faster in addition to keeping things organized and the designer/client relationship a positive one.
Disclaimer: The images on this page are not owned by PrintCall and are used solely as design examples. Please check bottom of post to see their original sources.

Project Initiation

One of the most important steps in the design process is accumulating the information you’ll need. This is usually achieved by either a face-to-face meeting with the client, a questionnaire, or even a Skype meeting if you really wish to establish a personal relationship with your client. In gathering this information, you now know your client’s objectives and can focus on the details for inclusion in your brief.

The Brief: Although it may seem like more work than necessary, a design brief has a couple of key benefits, no matter how big or small the project seems to you:

1. It ensures the client knows what he or she wants from the project
2. It acts as your point of reference during the project

The more information the client provides initially, the better the result for the both of you (especially the client). Topics for inclusion in the design brief may vary but a few good starting points may be:

• Corporate Profile – A summary of the business
• Market Position – An evaluation of the company’s service/product in relation to the competition.
• Communication Task – What’s the message trying to be conveyed and through what means (e.g. taglines, body copy, photography, etc.)
• Target Market – Demographics — the age, gender, income, employment, geography, lifestyle of those the client wants to reach.
• Objectives – What quantifiable result does the client want to achieve?
• Schedule/Deadline – A realistic schedule of how the project should proceed.

At this stage it’s also a good idea to accept a deposit for the first half of the project.

Research

After you’ve met with the client and have a firm understanding of the task at hand, it’s now time to put your nose to the grindstone. After reviewing the materials given to you you can start research. This phase usually entails taking into account competitors, market trends, product/service differentiators, the history of the business, and the future of it as well.

While this stage isn’t usually going to be your favorite but it’s well worth it in the end. There’s nothing worse than creating a beautiful logo only to discover it’s too similar to a competitor’s. You’ll reap the rewards of the time you put into research, trust me.

Strategy

This step may vary depending on the scale of your project, but generally it’s best to develop a strategy before putting pencil to paper. Through this you analyze the research gathered and decide on design and functionality criteria. This can be as simple as a theme carried across all marketing materials. You can present this strategy to the client to get approval or disapproval before heading on in the hopes of getting more creative direction.

Development

Once you have a clear strategy, the idea is to then create preliminary design concepts based on the strategy you developed. Developing concepts can be done through various means when inspiration strikes, but here are some of the most effective.

• Mind Mapping: A diagram that’s used to represent words, ideas, and tasks linked to your central idea. Encourages a brainstorming approach to planning and organizing tasks.
• Storyboarding: Meant to pre-visualize a motion picture, animation, etc by organizing illustration in a sequence.
• Free Writing: A great way to get your ideas down on paper and later expand on them.

• Layout Creation: Sketch layouts from collected inspiration, play around with color schemes and typography until a direction strikes you, and then explore it more.

Develop several different concepts through the above methods. The idea here is to create as many different options before choosing the most viable one. Through the help of the client, these ideas can them be narrowed down to a couple of ideas for further development and refinement.

Presentation/Refinement

Often best presented as a PDF file with the design in context. It’s now the job of the client to review the designs and provide feedback based on their objectives and the needs of their target audience.

At this stage the designer is tasked with making changes to the aesthetic elements based on client’s request or putting the final touches on an agreed upon design.

Production/Launch

With an approved design, the designer is now able to implement the finished piece across all deliverables, which may include both print and web. Depending on the project and/or media, the materials may often be handed off to a third-party, which includes:

1. Prepress/Printer
2. Media Outlet
3. Launched on the Web

If it’s a web project, instructions and documentation may be required for administrative purposes, as well as Search Engine submission.

Completion

There’s nothing more rewarding than turning over a completed project to a satisfied client, so congratulate yourself.

You can now invoice your client the remaining bill for the project. Oftentimes this is best achieved through online invoicing software, which will help save time associated with putting together an invoice. 

With a solid process in place for completing a design project, you not only establish a closer relationship with your client, but you take a lot of the guesswork away when it comes down to creating something memorable for them. Consider it one less hurdle you have to overcome. Do you have a design process in place that you utilize with each new project? Feel free to share any tips with us that I may have missed.

Image Source: talk-more'dot'blogspot'dot'com

God Bless U!!!!! - Tom, www.PrintCall.com

46 Sample Party Invitations and Announcements

As an invited guest, you may have felt that buzz of excitement when you were given a beautifully prepared card invite, or saw a high-impact poster announcing a big bash or event. When it’s your turn to make your intended guests feel that way for your party, you may need to get a lot of inspiration to get the idea that makes your invites click. No need to look far though, because you can get a whole lot of inspiration right here with this large collection of creatively designed party invitations and announcements! Take notes on how these designs work and what elements they use so you can apply those insights when creating your own invite designs. Sit back, scroll down and enjoy the ride!

Disclaimer: The images on this page are not owned by PrintCall and are used solely as design examples. Please check bottom of post to see their original sources.

46 Examples of Party Invitations and Announcements 

Image & details Source: zpecter'dot'deviantart'dot'com

If you feel that we’ve missed any excellent examples of party invites or announcements that you know of, please share them with everyone in the comments!

Get your party invitations printing done right and at the right price; check out the latest offers we’ve got at UPrinting.com! If you enjoyed this post, there’s more where that came from – subscribe to the Printcall Blog before you go. 

Business Card Design Project Walkthrough

This business card project follows on from the initial logo design that was created a couple of months back. With the business cards requiring this branding, the vector logo files were opened up in Adobe Illustrator.

A new Illustrator document was created at the size of 88mm by 55mm, the standard size of business cards at the print firm I use. The color mode is set to CMYK for print purposes and raster effects at 300ppi (although no effects are used in this project it's worth remembering the setting).

Being a print project the document required bleed at 3mm on each side of the document, therefore a rectangle of 94mm by 61mm was drawn and centred on the artboard. This was then filled with 45C, 100M, 55Y and 40K to continue forward the Visibility Driving Tuition brand colours.

To add a little visual interest and depth to the card a slight gradient effect was added using the Gradient Mesh Tool. The highlight was given the same colour swatch but minus the black (K) ink, this means there is a solid coat of cyan, magenta and yellow but the gradient of black giving the overall change in tone.

Before placing any text or content on the card, a set of guides were placed. A guide was positioned on each side of the artboard, then using the Move command they were positioned 5mm inwards.

The logo was placed on the front of the card, then scaled down to fit within the content area. Being sat on a dark background the logo needed a light colouring, pure white was too brash and contrasting so this was softened with 30% magenta.

The web address of the Visibility Driving Tuition website was then set in News Gothic, the font chosen as part of the Visibility branding. Using a mixture of light and bold variations the important section of the address was made to stand out.

Being an address of three parts a small amount of spacing was added between each word, this helps differentiate the three making it easier to read with a passing glance.

An 88x55mm rectangle was drawn and positioned centrally on the artboard, this was then used as a base for the crop marks using the Filter > Create > Crop Marks command.

With the front of the business card complete the file was saved.

The document was then stripped back to the basic structure, and a copy saved as the rear of the card on which the main details would be held.

Using a similar process, a grey rectangle was drawn (including bleed) using a fill of 80% black.

Using the Gradient Mesh tool, a single point at a lighter shade of 60% black was added to the top left corner. This again helps add a little depth and interest to the design. With the rear containing fine text, the single black ink ensured the printed reproduction was extremely crisp.

An area at the base of the card was to be sectioned to include the three main services, this was drawn using a large circle to produce a subtle curved edge.

Using a temporary rectangle at the size of the document the large circle was trimmed to size using the Pathfinder tool.

The colour scheme used on the front of the card was continued in this bottom area, adding a slight gradient across the width of the card and a thin stroke across the top edge.

The logo was placed onto the document and positioned within the margins in the top right corner.

The name, job title and contact details were then laid out in the chosen font. For the name in particular, the design style of the logo was continued through by setting the text in lowercase with a mixture of bold and light weights. After some feedback an alternate version was also created for comparison with normal capitalisation and spacing, but it was decided that the little tweaks added that little extra to the design and were carried forward.

The three main services of driving lessons, pass plus and driver improvement were added to the lower section using this same type style, aligning each one to the left, right and centre.

To separate each item, a small circular point was drawn, aligned with the text and filled with the colour swatch used on the stroke for consistency.

With the crop marks set in place the rear of the card was then complete. The design was soon approved and ready for printing. All text was converted to outlines to avoid font troubles.

Each file was then saved as an EPS.

The two EPS files were then converted to PDF files using Adobe Distiller's Press Quality setting.

To save sending two separate files, the two PDFs were then combined into one file using Adobe Acrobat.

With the two files combined into one high resolution print file the business card artwork was ready to be sent to print.

One final check was made using the Output Preview option within Adobe Acrobat by heading to Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview. Each plate can be viewed individually to check for stray colours and the reproduction of gradients. The Total Area Coverage also highlighted that there were no areas that risked over inking, with the exception of the crop marks that were set inregistration black.

for business card printing, contact: http://printcall.com/category.php?id_category=5

The files were packaged up and emailed to the printer, the order for 250 double sided cards with a matt lamination on both sides was placed.

In just a few days the cards arrived by post, all the colours looked fine, the text was nice and crisp and the gradients had been reproduced as planned, adding a nice soft variation of tone across each side of the card. 

Image & details source: Spoongraphics, UK

Disclaimer: Images on this page are not owned by PrintCall.com and are used solely as design examples.