What you need to know to order design development

Design is a way to handle attention, inspire information, and make desired products of an industry. There are ways to separate visually the main information from the secondary, additional, explanatory.

17th Aug 2020
10 minute read

What you need to know to order design development

The understanding of the quality of the design is different for the customer and the designer. The designer looks at the design as a solution to problems, the customer sees it as a beautiful picture.

Design is a way to handle attention, inspire information, and make desired products of industry. There are ways to separate visually the main information from the secondary, additional, explanatory. Unreasonable coloring of texts in different colors violates the consistency of the consumer's attention, and this leads to the ineffectiveness of the entire design and the information it carries. According to statistics, a person looks at the information design for several seconds, and during this time his brain understands whether he needs it or not. If during these seconds he sees a benefit for himself, you can arouse desire ...

Any design development begins with a concept, definition of tasks, suitable solutions. To determine the tasks that the design should solve, try answering the question: why do you need this design (logo, business card, flyer ...)? A logo is a mark that accompanies and distinguishes a company and its products from competitors. The task of the logo is to remember quickly, to evoke associations, not to lose recognition with a strong decrease, with black and white printing. A flyer or leaflet is an information medium, and the tasks can be: informing about services, a unique selling proposition, inviting somewhere ... Graphic styles, composition, color are tools for solving problems assigned to the design, and not a way to make the layout not boring.

After defining the objectives, see how these objectives are solved in the competitors' designs. Determine what you like and what you don't.

Before buying a smartphone, you look at several modern phones that have entered the market not very long ago. You decide on the functions you need, choose possible models, probably even read reviews. The same approach should be used in the choice of design, decide on the functions, get acquainted with similar modern works, and only after that order the development of the design.

Make us some design, as you're a designer…

I often hear phrases when people want to order a design: "Draw us something", "Make us some design, you are a designer, suggest us something, and we will choose if we like it." Let's imagine what the result will be from these phrases in other service industries.

You get into a taxi and tell the driver, "let's go." The driver asks: "Where?" Your answer: "Somewhere." Then the driver will ask how much to travel? The driver will not make five free attempts to guess where you need to, or even the direction. It takes time to develop a quality design. Design development is a common service industry like others. You don’t tell the taxi driver: “Here you take me, and I’ll see if I like it quickly, then I’ll pay,” or: “Something we went wrong, let's come back and try again.”

At the hairdresser, you don’t say: “Please give me a haircut. I don’t want the hairdresser to work for free, it’s just a test task, and if I like the result of the new haircut, next time I’ll pay.”

In order not to give each new customer a test task, there is a designer's portfolio, which contains the best designer's work. Take a look at the portfolio and decide for yourself if you like the work of this designer?

When you are in a restaurant you don’t ask the waiter: "Bring something sweet." The waiter must, in response, list the names of the desserts they have. You insist, not wanting to delve into the waiter's list of words: "Bring your best dessert." They bring you a creamy ice cream cake, and you had a warm cinnamon cake in your performance. As a result, you are not satisfied, but you still pay for the ordered dish.

If you do not know what you want, at the time of ordering the development of the design, if you do not know how to explain your unformed desires, of course, the designer does not understand you. In this case, the designer makes design options based on the analysis of your target audience and the competitive market, explains why he used certain elements. Whether you like the layouts or not, you pay for the designer's work. If you want to see new design options, order them after paying for the previous ones. You probably already realized that it can be infinite. You do not agree and do not want to pay the designer for layouts that you do not like, and the designer is not interested in working endlessly for free, an unprofitable collaboration for both parties.

To limit the “infinity” that is not beneficial to both sides, you can fill out a brief when ordering a design development. Specially prepared questions will help you easily formulate a task for a designer. The brief becomes the terms of reference for the designer and a clear set of your requirements. According to the tasks set by you, the designer can calculate the cost of the order and the time it will take him to develop the design. According to the terms of reference, the design is assessed whether it meets the requirements or not. If you notice any requirements that have not been considered, the designer must redo the layout for free based on your comment. But if you have new ideas and requirements that were not initially described in those assignments, they are paid additionally, since when calculating the order according to the terms of reference, the time for your new ideas was not taken into account.

Tastes Differ

The restaurant serves a spiced dish according to the generally accepted standard, however, there is salt and pepper on the table with which you complement the dish to your desired taste. Of course, you did not come to the designer for a standard dish. Will you be sure that all your friends and colleagues will definitely like the dish with salt and spices according to your preferences?

Tastes differ. In the supermarket, you can ask the seller if the sausage is tasty, the seller said it was tasty and gave you a taste, you liked it, but the person standing next to it, no. The situation is the same in design, the difference is in giving you a try, the designer must first prepare it, according to an individual recipe. The recipe is made taking into account all your wishes described in those tasks. When ready, you get a sausage, try it, but it does not have a standard taste, it differs from the one sold in every supermarket. It tastes good for you, but you are confused, or the sausage should be a sausage, or boldly offer the world a new look at the sausage. You give the people around you to try, and you remember how you yourself tried someone else's sausage in the supermarket, but the person standing next to you did not like it. It's up to you whether to keep the sausage creative or prepare a new one with a classic taste.

When developing a design, it is imperative to consider the taste of your customers or partners, the target audience for which your product and services are designed. It is necessary to analyze your target audience, values, what they do, how they rest, whether they lead a healthy lifestyle, etc. The more detailed the design customer describes his target audience, when ordering design development, the more accurate the design will be.

Show examples of designs you like

When discussing your wishes for design, before starting the development of the layout, the designer asks for examples of the design you like. When discussing the examples you provide, the designer can understand your taste. If necessary, he will explain to you how your taste differs from the preferences of your target audience. Often there are times when a customer likes a design in a style that has emerged from modern trends. This graphic style can be used when you want to link product associations to a specific time period. But if you want a modern design of a modern company with innovative solutions, you should not use outdated trends.

Sometimes people try to use design terms without fully understanding their meaning, and the designer understands this literally, according to the attached examples of the customer, the designer will understand the customer's wishes, and without examples, there will be a misunderstanding of the task, which will lead to errors in the layout.

There is an opinion among customers: why should I show examples of design, then they will make me like everyone else, but I want some creativity. Only from the examples, you show can a designer understand what you consider creative. Most often this is a solution to the problem in a non-standard way, an original idea that solves the problem. How bold and non-standard design decisions will your target audience accept in your opinion? In my experience, there were several orders when the customer asked for a creative but had something else in mind. In one of them, at the stage of ready-made layouts, during the discussion, it turned out that the customer simply meant bright colors and not non-standard solutions. And time was spent, layouts were created anew, all because of misunderstanding.

Changes

There is another opinion of people who order a design for the first time: "If something needs to be corrected, then this work is not suitable for us." As far as clearly and comprehensively the customer explains the task, the result will be as clear from cooperation with the designer. It happens that people are embarrassed to express their ideas, most likely, at the stage of ready-made design layouts, it turns out that the design is not at all what the customer imagined it to be.

Editing is a normal design development process. Edits are free and paid. If you are not satisfied with how you described your wishes that are implemented in the brief, the designer will correct the layout for free. New wishes appear or you changed the wishes, material, texts that you gave earlier for the layout, such edits will be additionally paid.

When providing information, text for the layout indicates the hierarchy of the importance of the text. Which text is the main one should be the first to come to the attention of the viewer, which is the secondary one. The designer can take responsibility for the analysis of the texts provided by the customer and independently determine the main information from the secondary, in this case, there is already a possibility of a designer's mistake, perhaps the customer considered the main information not a unique selling proposition or product, but the brand name. Correctly drafted terms of reference will help to avoid such misunderstandings. The designer, at the first stage of the project, does not own any information about your company or product. The designer does not know what kind of promotion will take place in your company, and what feature of the service you offer to the end consumer, so provide all possible information in full on time.

Good design is a collaboration between a designer and a client. The designer offers a design developed for the end consumer, a customer who does not want to develop a technical assignment will not understand the design, make changes that violate the meaning of the design and, as a result, pay for the design that does not work.

17th Aug 2020

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