The design process can be daunting and overwhelming and confusing. So I’d you are new to design or have have an idea of what happens when you work with a designer, I’ve put together a step by step guide to what happens when and what is expected of you as a design client.

1. Initial contact is made. You will most probably want to find a designer who fits with your ethos and style. Creativity and design are very individualistic and personal disciplines. And so is setting up your own business. So, it’s worth looking through designers past work.

2. Once you have chosen your designer and made contact, you will discuss what you want: your designer may have some previously set out packages that she has put together or they may just go with your lead and formulate a bespoke project plan for you.

3. You and your designer will then decided on a course of action. You will be handed a proposal document. This document will be your point of reference detailing everything you agreed on and the price that was agreed on.

4. At this stage, your designer will be getting to work on some ideas. If its a logo design, she may begin by putting pencil to paper. This is the quickest and easiest way for a designer to get rough ideas out. At this stage, nothing will be refined and perfect. There may be some use of colour, or not. There may be a lot of scribbles, notes and little diagrams. But on the whole, there should be a few emerging ideas based on the design brief and your specification.

5. Your designer will send you some sketches, with some of their thoughts on how the idea could or should work. Your job now is to decide which one or two of the initial ideas you would like to see digitised. You could tell your designer that you like an aspect of one idea and a part of another and would like to see those two elements combined, or you might like what your designer has sketched out. Either way, you should be getting close to figuring out what your logo will look like.

6. After digitising the chosen concepts, you should get another round of ideas. This time, they should look more refined and polished. All that hard work at the beginning (ideation, sketching, refining, re-sketching, collaboration and discussion) should make the rest of the process a bit easier. Getting close to a final design is exciting, but its important to make sure you are working closely with your designer to ensure that you are getting a good quality logo that stands out (but also, doesn’t infringe copyright, look like everyone else’s, and is also appropriate for the industry your business will be in!)

7. Once you have looked over your final draft designs and have given your designer your feedback, your designer will get to work on finalizing your logo, either in illustrator or photoshop or any of the other design programs available out there. Generally, Illustrator is the best program to use and is one I have been using for years. I loves it 😊

8. Final designs should be (fingers crossed) sent to you now and the project is almost at an end. At this end stage, you will normally be sent a digital folder of documents as agreed with your designer. People generally use their logo designs as their profile images for social media business accounts, so as part of “The Simple Logo Design” package, the files you will receive from me will be .jpg, .png, .pdf and .eps all in high resolution and then another set of files ready for your social media, labelled for ease of use.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. Let me know in the comments below what you think, and what your experiences of working with a designer has been like.

The Simple Logo Design

If you would like to know more about the Simple Logo Design Package or any other of the design packages I offer, click on the link below.

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hoarding illustration project

Around 18 months ago, I was approached to create a series of illustrations, that would be used to decorate the hoarding being put up on a local schools fencing. The children’s playground was open to the car park (apart from having the fencing, which obviously anyone could look through) of the school and the adjacent local secondary school, so the problem that needed solving was the lack of privacy for the children and staff. But in having the paneling fitted to the fences surrounding the school, a second issue arose. Plain sheet metal isn’t the most inspiring to look at for any adult, let alone a child, so the headmaster decided it would be best to have some illustrations created so cover the plain and boring panels.

The initial brief was to create something that reflected multiculturalism, education and a sense of welcomeness. Following a brainstorming session with the headmaster and the director of the chosen signage company whom I worked with on this project, we decided on 4 main themes – Classroom, outdoor learning, welcome to the school and physical education/sports.

The images shown are mock ups of the illustrations, and not photos of the work in situ, so as to afford the school some degree of privacy.