Whether you’re just starting up, or you’ve been in business for generations, a graphic designer can help you shape your company image and achieve brand recognition. Through creative ideas, innovation, and effective marketing, working with a graphic designer can help you take your business to the next level.
Below are tips for working with a graphic designer that will help you make the most of your time and money spent, improving the performance of any marketing that you invest in.
1. Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is central to your marketing strategy. When you understand your field and its competitors, you will be in a better position to help your graphic designer develop your brand identity.
Consider the words and feelings that you want your brand image to convey. Elegant and classy will have a different look than bold and confident. When you understand your audience and you’re able to convey this to your graphic designer, they will have a much easier time coming up with a design that meets your objectives.
2. Know Your Brand Color Codes
You might already have a logo and need some collateral materials for your company. It is essential that you know your brand colour codes to ensure that the colours used across all of your marketing are consistent with your brand, whether you are having something designed for print, web or another platform.
If you don’t know your brand colour code, your graphic designer should be able to open up a vector image of your logo and find the codes in their design program.
If you do not have brand colour codes, your graphic designer can help you come up with colours for your brand that will help keep your brand consistent and would form part of your brand design guidelines. This colour scheme should be used across your marketing materials such as brochure or website design.
3. Know Your Fonts
It is also important to know the fonts that are used in your marketing materials. Again, consistency is key. Providing your graphic designer with the names of fonts used in your logo and marketing materials will make it easier for them to keep your brand consistent.
If you do not have fonts for your brand, your graphic designer will work with you to develop a set of fonts convey the style that you are aiming for.
4. Provide Quality Images
You should provide your graphic designer with quality images to use in your marketing. The images you use in your marketing materials should be high resolution and high quality.
You should have high-resolution professional images of your product/service so your potential customers can review the quality, this will make it much more likely for them to convert rather than using a poor quality or stock image.
5. Be Realistic with Timeframes
You and your graphic designer should work out a timeframe for first drafts, revisions, and final products. A professionally designed piece takes specialized knowledge and skill, which also takes time.
Your graphic designer will work with you to set up an appropriate timeframe for each milestone. If you can provide feedback promptly, it is more likely that your graphic designer will be able to adhere to the timeframe.
6. Provide Examples
You should provide your graphic designer with examples of images, logos, or collateral material that you like. Graphic design should be collaborative work. It’s not your graphic designer’s job to guess your preferences, so the more information that you can provide, the better.
If you can give your designer examples of similar designs that show the image you wish to convey, it will give your graphic designer a great starting point to make sure you’re both on the same page and heading in the right direction.
7. Give Timely and Quality Feedback
When you can provide your graphic designer with good feedback in a timely matter, they will do a better job of designing something that you love. Generalized feedback such as “make it clean” or “I’ll know it when I see it” will not help your designer come up with a better design.
To help your graphic designer in the revision process, it’s best to give specific feedback. Tell your designer what you think about the colours, fonts, photos, shapes, etc. If you don’t like an aspect of the design, let your graphic designer know. Again, if you provide examples to further illustrate your feedback, that will help your graphic designer get it right.
8. Ask Questions
If you have questions during the design process, be sure to ask. You are paying the graphic designer to create an image, logo, brochure, etc., so you want to be sure you really do like the design. If you don’t understand why they did something a certain way, ask.
Also, it’s okay if you disagree with them. If you don’t like something they did, ask them to explain the significance. They are the expert. However, in the end, you will have the final say in the design.
9. Ask for a Design Contract
A graphic design contract will protect you and the designer. Decide ahead of time how many revisions you are paying for. This should all be in the contract. This way there are no surprises. Some graphic designers charge for each revision. You’ll want to know this ahead of time.
The contract should also spell out what all is included in the price as well as milestones for each stage of the design. A contract will help keep things on track and avoid any miscommunication about what is expected of both parties.
10. Have an Idea of What You Need
Before you begin the process of working with a graphic designer, you should have some idea of what you would like designed. If you don’t know what your brand is or what you want your brochure to say or do for your audience, then it will be difficult for a graphic designer to pinpoint exactly what needs to be done.
So, before you hire a graphic designer, you should have a pretty good idea of your vision or goal. If you don’t know what you want, you likely will not be happy with the result.
If you are not very experienced working with a graphic designer let them know, at Palmiero Design we’d be happy to provide guidance and recommendations from our years of experience to help you create a product that meets your marketing objectives.
