A common challenge in managing and optimizing creative processes, including the graphic design process, is finding the right balance between creative freedom and organized structure.
A rigid structure might mean limiting creativity, but on the other hand, too much freedom can also lead to missed deadlines, endless revision cycles, and more. This is why graphic designers and creative workers need to design their process strategies.
While each designer might need their unique workflow to perform optimally, after discussing with experienced graphic designers and creative workers, here we’ve compiled a step-by-step graphic design process guide you can use as your foundation.
Before starting a graphic design project, this guide can always help you design the best possible process to ensure efficiency.
Step 1: Defining Requirements
Before anything else, we should begin the project by defining and/or identifying the requirements of the graphic design project.
If your client has provided a project brief, then it’s an excellent place to start, or else you and your client can decide the requirements together via a kickoff meeting. The same principle also applies to self-initiated projects, and you should consider details like:
- The target audience of the project
- Requirements and specifications
- Potential competitors
- References
Arguably this is the most crucial step since it will significantly shape the rest of the steps. Gather as much data as possible for the project. Conduct thorough market research (if your client hasn’t already) and understand as much as you can about the client (if any), the target audience, and the client’s competitors.
Step 2: Mood-boarding
Based on the project requirements you’ve defined in the first step, the next step is to build a mood board for the project.
A mood board, or inspiration board, is essentially a collage of ideas (consisting of images, visuals, or other objects) that will serve as the reference and inspiration for the project. The board will define the mood of the project to maintain visual direction.
In your mood board, you can include images, font choices, color schemes, graphic inspirations, patterns, and others, depending on the project’s requirement.
Use the mood-boarding process as a brainstorming phase, collaborate with your team members and involve your client when possible so you can decide on the essential elements of the project before the actual design.
Step 3: Thumbnailing or Drafting
The next step is to put the ideas you’ve gathered in the mood-boarding process into a draft (a thumbnail). This can be a hand-drawn sketch, or you can also create a digital draft with your chosen software solution.
In this step, the focus is to sort through the ideas and test the waters to check whether your ideas are feasible. Include all the separate elements of the design that have been decided on the mood board: font choices, color choices, images, margins, etc.
Step 4: Refining Concept
Based on your draft/thumbnail, you should have gathered enough information about which of your ideas can work and which wouldn’t. In this step, we will refine the concept based on this data to create one final concept for the project.
Refer back to the requirements and/or the client brief you’ve defined on the first step when finalizing this concept, and focus on satisfying the project’s target audience.
Step 5: Design
The actual design process starts here. Depending on the project and your preference, you can use the appropriate software and tools to do the job: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Canva, and more. You may also want to incorporate a process management and workflow automation solution to facilitate collaboration. Process management software will also help in the approval/proofing process for graphic designers, which we’ll discuss in the next steps.
Step 6: Client feedback
Refine the design into a deliverable that you can present to the client. Then comes what’s arguably the most stressful part of the graphic design process: client feedback.
You can send the deliverable via email then collect client feedback in various ways: video conference (Zoom), email, or even in-person. Or, with a process management software like Aproove, you can also incorporate online proofing to streamline the approval process.
Online proofing allows your client to leave feedback on the deliverable file so you can communicate in real-time, eliminating the need for back-and-forth emails and endless phone calls and minimizes the number of revisions.
Step 7: Revisions
Based on the client’s feedback, revise the deliverable. Have another brainstorm with your team if necessary, and go back to the drawing board.
In this stage, it’s essential to focus on the client’s preferences rather than being overly defensive about our initial work. Be versatile, and compromise. Based on the client and the project’s requirement, you may need to repeat steps 6 and 7 several times until the client is happy with the final product.
Step 8: Approval and sign off
This step is about presenting the final design to the client and gaining the client’s final approval. In this step, we should also secure written approval from the client to signify that the project is indeed done so you can start the billing process.
Step 9: Production
Depending on the nature of the graphic design product, here lies the actual production of the deliverable. If the product is digital in nature (i.e., website or digital image), then this step can be pretty straightforward. However, if the production involves physical production (print design, film), the production phase can take much longer, and you should supervise it.
Nevertheless, the graphic design process is complete in this step, and the project is considered done.