5 Critical Questions You Must Ask Your Designer Before Finalizing The Final Design Copy

At any graphic design firm, hundreds of designs go through the mill every day. Sometimes, the process is too fast for designers and client servicing agents to know what they are looking for. Whether it is a business card, a logo or a brand ad there is a uniformity defined by the rules of efficient design. Graphic design is an expansive topography that consists of website design, brand logo design, typography, print ad and all kinds of promotions that are parts of the visual advertising process.

Since every design firm is different from another and every designer has a distinct style, you need to find a way to find the exact design that is perfect for your next project. Here are the five critical questions you must answer before you finalize any design:

Is it too trendy?

There’s nothing wrong with trendy. The only problem with designs that tend to be too trendy is the lack of a connecting factor with the crowd that does not follow trends. Some things need a touch of tradition and permanency – like website design. You may design a flyer or a poster as per trends since they have the average lifespan of 2 weeks to a month in the Virginia Office Locations. Therefore, being trendy just for fun is going to cost you extra money. Most popular modules may not work on all platforms. For example, parallax effect web pages are quite popular. However, not all devices support the parallax scrolling effect. On the other hand, responsive designs for websites are timeless.

Is there too much noise in the design?

There are instances where the designer gets caught in the latest style. There are too many styles evolving at the moment including double exposure, glitch and scratch effect, dual tone and many more. One piece of design, say a poster with more than one of these effects may look clumsy and distract the target audience from the intended message. On the other hand, using images, styles, and typography your competitor uses can also confound your target audience. So look for distinct styles, colors, and design elements. Always keep yourself recognizable amidst a crowd of your contemporaries.

Is the design appropriate for your users?

The easiest way to do this is to run an A/B test. If cannot run a usability test immediately, you can always try to put yourself in the user's shoes. Let us say that you are trying to create a website for your company that deals with fashion jewelry. Creating a website that resembles a credit union site or a bakery website will surely attract the wrong users. It will increase your apparent CTA, but it will also depreciate your conversion rate. A simple yet most-neglected rule of thumb is to stay away from Comic Sans, forever! No matter which site you are trying to create, stick with Serif or Sans Serif fonts that all platforms support. To judge the necessity of each design element, just go ahead and ask the designer what it does. If it has no real function, you can go ahead and get rid of the component since it can affect your site loading time by a few microseconds.

How easy is the design?

Your target audience must understand what you are trying to say. It should not elude the very people you are creating it for. Always remember – you should NEVER talk down to the target user, but at the same time always feed them the necessary information in small pieces that they can understand. Visual hierarchy, the correct selection of colors, proper placement of images and good typography can help your audience grasp the meaning of any design quite easily. Thankfully, you can unleash all your creativity when it comes to designing business cards and other items that have a shorter shelf-life.

Is the design easy to maintain?

Depending on the medium and the type of the design, there are several categories of maintenance you need to heed. While designing a great website, you must account for content management system or CMS expenses, search engine optimization or SEO costs and customer relationship management or CRM charges. While there are quite a few platforms that support website building and blog functionalities, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento still lead the race of CMS platforms. These names come bearing a branding of trust, reliance and cost-effective service. Whenever it is time to finalize a design, ask your designer about maintenance costs straight up.

The designing process involves much decision-making for the brand manager and marketing departments. The design you finalize should be able to convey the desired message and make an impression in the hearts of the target audience. Sometimes, in case of print designing, upgrading to a better quality print, finish or paper can also leave a lasting impression on your target group.