I am always trying to think of ways to create content that is helpful to my clients and educates them about the the processes that a graphic designer goes through each and every day.  The best way for me to explain things is by showing an example visually. Hopefully this post should help our future clients understand more about what we do, the importance of client/designer communication, and maybe even provide some tips that are helpful when trying to hire the right designer.

Let’s use today’s project as a case study.

CLIENT NAME: Dragonfly Paddle Boatworks

CLIENT’S REQUEST/DESIGN NEED: To design a vintage style wrap for their line of paddle boards.

HERE’S HOW IT STARTS!
My client showed me a piece of art that inspired him to come up with a wrap design that incorporated a 1940′s female that was classy, sophisticated, but also had that “pin up girl” look. The image to the left is what was emailed to us. This portrait by Alberto Vargas,  immediately got my wheels turning about the look and feel that this final paddle board wrap would have, but I had a mountain of issues to work out.

As a designer there is more mechanical and logistic work in certain graphics than most people understand. There is a fair amount of basic math that is involved as well. With this particular project I had to consider the following.

As with all of our work, we only use images and art we purchase. Simply downloading art from Google images, just does not cut it! This means that I was going to have to purchase some stock photos or art from one of the many stock art web sites. No big deal, right? Well, we will have to see.

DIMENSIONS ARE KEY!
My next issue was related to dimensions of the actual board. I needed to know what my working canvas size was, so I had to get my client on skype. Within 20 mins or so, we had the bugs worked out and I new what my actual dimensions were.  My next phone call was to the printer to make sure I left enough bleed room in and around the image for trimming the graphics during installation. Remember, these dimensions are extremely important to print graphics at this scale and having them professionally installed is not cheap. If you make a simple math mistake, you could be telling your client that he is going to have to trash his print. That little mistake could be hundreds or even thousands of dollars depending on the print size. A graphic designer must be precise and maintain a basic understanding of print and mechanical variables involved in this print process. The image on the left shows what my client and I used to make sure we were designing to the right dimensions.

FAST PROOFS PRODUCE BETTER RESULTS.
I also needed to figure out how I was going to establish a simple proof for my client without spending too many hours tweaking and optimizing art at large scales. This is important from a business standpoint. If I was to render all of this art at full and final print scale, I could be wasting valuable billable time. Simply working at a smaller and faster scales allows me to produce more concepts while learning what my client likes and dislikes. This particular job was pretty simple in this department. He enjoyed my ideas, and encouraged me to push forward with my concept. This image to the left shows our first concept.

PICKING AN IMAGE.
Now that we were ready to put down some serious graphics, I needed the feature art, and this is where things can get difficult. Stock images can cost anywhere from 1$ to ???$’s. Picking the right images can always be difficult. Luckily, I found a few great images on shutterstock.com. The image I picked was a great match for this project, and it had all the attributes it needed to have. It was a high resolution photo, it was fitting “era” wise, and it was at a good price point of $10.00. This image needed a little help so I began to “clip” or remove the white space around the photo. My next move was to take a modern day photo and age it a bit. This was done using Photoshop filters and some simple color adjustments. After I was happy with her look, it was time to test her out in my full scale design space to see if she was going to work. The photo to the left shows where she came from and where she is now.

FINAL COMPOSITION.
This will represent the last step, but there are many steps involved in the final composition of your graphic. There is more color adjusting, scaling and re-scaling, blends, edits, and a host of others tricks that we use as graphics designers. The more time you have in a design usually means your final product will be be liked by you and most importantly your client. Of course I would like to show our final design for our bomber girl. We still have some consulting and testing to do with the printer, but we are almost there!

Before you leave, make sure to check out the tips below our bomber girl, These tips will help you choose the right graphics designer and speed up the design process!

IN CLOSING.
This article was not meant to instruct other graphics designers, or give away useful tips. This article is meant as an educational tool for clients to learn more about the creative process as well as the technical aspects involved in creating art in a commercial setting. Sometimes we all run into clients who are floored to learn about the costs involved in producing art for marketing purposes. Here are some quick tips when choosing a graphics designer that should help determine whether you are working with the right person for you.

• Ask to see a portfolio before getting started. The lack of a portfolio is dangerous, and you should probably run!
• Make sure you like their portfolio. Duh!
• Ask about hourly rates, and be concerned if a designer is not willing to give you a total price. A designer always has a rough idea of the time involved in a project, and if he or she doesn’t? Again, I would run!
• Give your designer as much information about a project as possible. If your designer has to manage text, images, and marketing messages, it is hard to focus on the look and the look alone. Providing your designer with images, text, sketches, and ideas is always helpful!
• Lastly, make sure you ask your designer for an estimated timeline for your project. Clients always hate to have a designer working on something for weeks or even months on end, so make sure to get a rough schedule and always allow for some buffer time!

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to your comments!