The following is a post by Fiorella Franzini, consultant at Dura Digital, about graphic design and the design process to follow to get the best results for our clients. We truly appreciate our team and we love that they are excited about working for our company.   Dura Digital provides more than just a paycheck – we provide a place to grow your career and take on new challenges each and every day! Visit duradigital.com/careers today to learn about career opportunities at Dura Digital!

People often see designers as artists creating beautiful pictures but the truth is that graphic designers come into play long before any aesthetic decisions are made.

Graphic design comes into play because there’s a problem that needs to be solved and designers have the commitment of reviewing what this problem is if they want the project to succeed. They need to understand what the goals of the customer are, what defines their personality, what the message to get across is. A good process starts with generating an open discussion with the people needing our help and by asking them the right questions. It is the designer’s duty to get a deep understanding of their client's business in order to build a solid base on which to craft the best design solution for their need.

When there are no more questions for the customer, it’s time for the research work to start. It’s key that designers understand what market the project is going to be surfing through and to know which are the people who will benefit from the results. This will let them figure out what might influence the success of the project.

This first part of the design process is extremely important as there would be a high risk of failure if decisions were based on each other’s sense of beauty. Your brand is the experience users or customers have across every touchpoint with your product. It’s about a story created by each customers’ experience and emotion, be it an object that can be held, a digital product, a service or even an event.

So, with the results from the research, designers should meet with the client again in order to share with them the explored ground. This will allow a space in which to revise and adjust objectives and choose the most valuable routes explored to work with. By having this exchange with the client, we make sure that we’re moving on solid ground, which avoids unwanted back and forward jumps in the process of developing the project. 

Once this new encounter takes place, it’s time for designers to start taking decisions and creating all assets for the graphic needs in matter. They should think about the tone in which the brand will speak to the users, what the use of space will be, they should also contemplate typography, colours, textures and shapes. In other words, they need to start building the product graphically. It’s time to try, make, discard, take what’s good, transform and try again. The aim is to find a solution beyond  the most evident ones, there’s where creativity has its free rides and where the most surprising results come from.

Once the designers have the material, it’s time again to meet with the client and present to them the results you’ve achieved together.

For some projects, this is where the design process ends. On some other projects, improvements and adjustment can be made after its launch, with the aim of polishing it using the experiences users have had.

A strong brand is a powerful tool of communication, that’s why it’s a good thing to develop a rich library of assets. Creating these assets will allow you to better communicate with your audience and will provide tools to help designers solve any communicational issue.

Graphic designers are your allies! Make them part of the team, make sure you take advantage of their time and respect their work so that you can obtain the best possible results for the ideas that cross your mind.