One week ago, I started on a study called “Communication & Multimedia Design” on the Avans, Den Bosch. This course is about the web, communication, new media, design, marketing and more.

The first course we enrolled to was about handling clients and the process that should be behind it. That’s what I want to teach you today, how to build a proper process of handling clients and the project.

We will be working according to a design-line. A design-line can be used in any project and handles the whole process of any client. Let’s take a closer look at this process, because when you master it and you use it anytime you get a project, you will notice that you will create better , more beautiful and smarter products.

The design-line is split in these points:

• Research & Analyze
• Conceptualization
• Design
• Feedback
• Creation

Research & Analyze

When you have sold your services to the client and you have a description of the project, you should not immediately start with the designing phase. First, you need to research what the client wants and what’s best for the company. What the client want is not always what the client need, and it’s your job to find out what he exactly need.

Structure the information you are provided with, look at the competitors, and most important, try to get as many information from the client as possible.

There are numerous ways to get that information, but for me, the most accurate way is via a design brief or face-to-face with the client. Because face-to-face is not always possible, I use the design brief most of the time.

A design brief will ask questions that the client should answer as detailed as possible about the market, their competitors, their goals for the project and more. Do not ask for colours or design specifications, because it’s your job to design their project.

When you have all the information you need, it time to analyze them. You need to know what is important for the company and what information should be reflected into the design.

Conceptualization

After that Research & Analyze phase, it’s time to come up with some concepts to bring your ideas to life. As a designer, you should already have a basic idea of how to design the information the client has provided.

That basic idea isn’t always the best, so make sure you design multiple concepts. With 5 or 6 concepts, you have explored more ways to visualize your idea and the idea of the client. Next, you can choose which solution fits best (or choose parts of each concept that work best) and improve that one accordiacaly.

One important part is to not be satisfied with your work when you have a proper looking concept in front of you. You can get much better results when you push your concept to the limit. That’s what is going to happen in the next design phase.

Design

In this phase, you have to develop your concept to the final design. In our study, we have to build 5 variations on the concept we’ve choosen in the conceptualization phase. That way, you will explore all the possibilities of that concept, and you can better see what works and what doesn’t.

For the record, the conceptualization phase should be done on paper. When you are done and you have choosen to proceed with one concept, you have to bring it over to the computer. Usually, that happens via Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. These programs have all the necessary tools to make your concept a real design.

In this phase, it is important to make your concept ready to show your client. Your client has to see the final outcome before their eyes, which means you have to put all the details in place. You have to put the ‘points on the I’.

When you are ready designing your concept, it’s time to proceed to the next phase.

Feedback

After the design stage, it’s time to show your client the design. You need to know if you are able to proceed to go the creation phase. The client has to provide critisicm on your work, because the client should be pleased too. They are the ones actually paying your bills, right?

When asking for feedback, make sure you use a protocol. With a protocol I mean you ‘sell’ your design in the same way every time, with every client and every design. You design such protocol once, and you’ll be able to use a good-looking and describitive way to sell your design every time. Usually, this is a PDF file that features all the qualities of your design. I will write an article about the selling protocol later on.

After you’ve sent your design, or if you have talked to the client directly, you have feedback. Make sure you go back to the conceptualization phase to implant that feedback. However, do not always implant feedback right away, because you can defend your work if you know your solutions are better for your client’s end result.

Going back to the conceptualization or design phase can happen a few times in a project. It may also happen that you have to start all over with a series of complete new concepts. When that happens, make sure you still use the design-line, or you would have a design that is not pushed to the limits.

When all the feedback is handled and the client has accepted the design, it’s time to create a live version in the next phase.

Creation

Depending on the project, you have to make a live version of your design. When you are designing a logo or identity, that is not always the case and you may be finished after the design phase. But for design projects like print or websites, there are a few things you need to do before the actual job is done.

When doing website jobs for example, you need to convert the design to a live website with XHTML & CSS. After that, you may need to implant custom PHP code or more advanced scripting. This all happends in the creation phase. You have to make things work exactly right for your client, because after this, the job should be done.

I’m looking forward to hear your comments on this method.