Keep Your Project On-time and In Budget

By Emily Adams, RCM Contributor:

A designer shares the things she wished clients knew:

Content! Content! Content!

The single most important thing you need to know about graphic design is that it can't save bad content! Content that is ready for design is fine-tuned for MESSAGE and free of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. If it takes you two months of back and forth with your internal team, it's time well spent. You should avoid using the layout process as "inspiration" as multiple text edits will drive up your costs significantly. If you get a completely new idea when you see your first designed draft, put layout on hold and go back to the content development phase.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth $$$

Another effective way for you to help is to thoroughly prep all of the materials you provide to the designer. If graphs/charts are included, the data should be configured as you would like it presented in the piece. The designer will most likely need to redo the materials in a design-specific program, but a nice, neat Excel file will make this process much faster and thus, less expensive. Any images you provide should be high-res and fairly good quality, meaning close to how you want them to look in the finished piece.

The Designer is a Magician, Not a Mind Reader

Make sure you are very explicit about things that may seem very obvious to you. For example, stock imagery can cost anywhere from $10 to hundreds of dollars. If your budget is an issue, make sure the designer is aware and instruct them to source appropriate images that are also cost effective as you define it. Make sure you and the designer agree that no images will be purchased without your approval.

If you have corporate graphic standards that need to be followed make sure the designer is provided with these or make a detailed list of key rules to follow when formatting text or using elements. Never assume the designer knows anything about your graphics standards. Review the first draft thoroughly to make sure that the designer is understanding and implementing the guidelines correctly.

Agree to Disagree: The Internal Approval Process

You can greatly reduce costs and keep deadlines intact by streamlining the approval process. Make sure that you know who will be in charge of approving design work and that everyone can agree to let that team or person's judgment stand. If you have thoroughly vetted your content, then you'll be way ahead of the game.

Social Marketing Example: Roxy

Everyone knows in today's climate of ad harassment, word of mouth is everything. Hence a new marketing catchphrase 'social marketing'. Well, I want to illustrate how that is done wisely. Love what Roxy, a brand of clothing for girls, accomplished this.

What do you and a brand like Roxy have in common? The need to connect with their customers on an ongoing basis, and in Roxy's case, have them advertise their clothes. Instead of going the traditional focus group route, they started an online community of over 900 girls. These girls were handpicked in stores across the country, deemed by Roxy as the trend-setters among their peers. Genius!

The first sell was to the girls, already fans of Roxy by being in the store. Roxy upped the ante by offering the girls exclusivity--making them feel important by allowing them to provide direct feedback on the clothes and get exclusive discounts on stores. The girls that are chosen by Roxy receives a welcome package which includes the latest clothing designs.

Now Roxy can get immediate responses to surveys--if Roxy poses a question on the message board, she'll get responses in minutes. They have over 300 active members who post several tims a day. Can you imagine having enough reponses to where in the SAME DAY you can go back to your uppers and enable them to make quick decisions?

Love this marketing initiavive for these reasons: feedback from a qualified team of customers (on trends, etc), lightening quick word of mouth marketing for this age demographic, and mainly that Roxy has made them feel important, and hence they are ACTIVE 'brand ambassadors'. It's a win-win (Roxy gets the info they need, their brand ambassadors get great discounts) that is a great marketing strategy for today, and can be applied to many industries now.