Before letting your designer loose on your design, you may want to make sure you have effectively communicated your design vision with him or her. Ideally, he or she will ask you these good design program questions up front, but I thought I would provide you with a head start to get you thinking about what you hope to accomplish with your design.
- Who is your target audience? Be specific. Our target audience is policy makers, funders, other professionals in our field, consumers, etc.
- What key message(s) do you hope to communicate with the design? We are professional, creative, engaging, etc.
- Is there certain information that is more important than other information that you would like to highlight in the piece? We would like to emphasize our key findings, important quotes, photos, specific messages, etc.
- How will this piece be used? We will use it to support advocacy efforts, to market our organization, to educate, to explain complex information, etc.
- How will this piece be viewed? It will be primarily viewed online, within a presentation, printed on personal printers or professionally, etc.
- Do you have standard colors, fonts, or logos that are required to be included in your design? Yes, we have design standards. No, we do not. Or we have design standards but we are hoping this piece will vary from them in a certain way.
Lastly, if possible gather examples of other similar projects that you both like and dislike. Be able to explain specifically what you like and dislike about them. Designers are visual people (along with many others), so this is a very useful technique.
-Elissa Schloesser