What to prepare before starting with a designer

Most delay in design projects does not happen in the design. It happens while everyone waits for material, a decision, or an answer. Here is what to gather first.

1. Decide who decides

One person. Not a department, not we will discuss it. When revisions arrive from three people with different tastes, the designer starts averaging and the result loses its character. If a committee decides, appoint someone to collect opinions and bring one.

2. Collect references, including bad ones

Five sites or logos you like and five you do not. The second set matters more. I do not want this, it feels cold carries far more information than I want something modern.

3. Find the source files for what exists

A vector logo, not a picture pulled from a slide deck. If there is no source file, say so immediately: redrawing a logo in vector is separate work, and it is better budgeted at the start than discovered mid project.

4. Write the copy, or admit there is none

Design around real text and design around placeholder are two different designs. A three word headline and a twelve word headline need different layouts. A rough draft in any form beats nothing.

5. Gather photographs

Your own photographs of the production line, the office, the team, the product. Even a mediocre shot of your real workshop works better than a perfect stock photograph of somebody else's. If there are no photographs, that is also an answer, and we build the design on graphics instead.

6. State the constraints

The brand colour that cannot be touched. The typeface handed down by head office. The minimum logo size on packaging. Anything that cannot change is better said at the start than discovered at the third review.

What it saves

In our experience a prepared client removes two to four working days and one revision round from a project. On an identity that is the difference between three weeks and a month.