Step 1: Analyze
It starts with understanding your customer. What challenges do they face? What drives their behavior? What will capture their interest? At the same time, how does that align to your business, objectives and values? Lastly, what additional information might impact the development of the assignment – current marketing materials, market research or something else?
These insights will be summarized in a project brief that defines the objectives, personality and tone, brand promise, positioning, project specifications, project schedule and metrics for success.
Step 2: Organize
It’s time to define the elements that will make you stand out from your competitors. What sort of impression do you want to convey? What type of visuals suit you best? Rather than jumping directly into a design, we create a mood board that includes imagery, texture, color and typography that define the desired look and feel. Finally, information design provides a framework for all of the content.
The deliverables for this phase include the mood board, recommended headlines and taglines, conceptual design and content outline. This provides another opportunity to make sure we are all on the same page.
Step 3: Design
Ideas begin to turn into reality as we translate the information design into a visual design. We start with the content as this will influence the final design. After all, it’s not about creating pretty pictures. It’s about conveying the right information that will lead the customer to action. Now for the fun part – combining the content with visuals. We believe choice is important and typically present multiple options – each with their own unique twist.
Once you have chosen a concept (or combination of concepts, as often is the case), we’ll begin to refine and finalize the design. It’s all about the details – the right imagery, the right headlines and the right experience.
Step 4: Deliver
Now it’s time to make it all real and deliver the finished materials. More importantly, it’s time to gauge how your customers respond to the finished materials. Do they indeed wow your audience? Have they delivered the desired result? And have they made a positive impact on your business?
After all, it’s not about simply creating an attractive image for your company. It’s about delivering meaningful experiences that resonate with your customers.
