This morning I spoke with the marketing firm we brought in at work. Our conversation reminded me of when I was an undergrad at Cal State Fullerton studying for my B.F.A in Graphic Design. I had a crazy (but brilliant) professor named Bryan Cantley who always pushed us to the limit in our 3D Design class. The first day of class he locked the door at 8am sharp and informed us that we where about to enter what he called, ‘Design Boot Camp.’ I’ll never forget that day. I was pushed to the limit but loved every minute of it. My final project was an installation that was suspended from the ceiling. I was one of the few who scored a A in the class.

That class taught me that design is problem solving and discipline. Today I was reminded of that.

In-house graphic designers tend to get pushed from upper management and sales to crank stuff out with a due date of yesterday. As a result, the planning process and the needed foundational steps are often skipped. Many times, there is no way in heck a designer can have enough time in the planning phases if those planning phases aren’t realized or valued by upper management.

For example – I can kick out a ‘good looking’ logo in around 8 hours – A nice typeface, clean negative space, good use of color, etc. And, I can kick out an awesome whitepaper in a few hours. What begins to happen though, is the expectations for turnaround time become a little skewed. Yes I can turn out something ‘good looking’ very quickly. But if you have something good looking and you can’t answer why you did what you did, or how it supports the brand, then you just wasted a massive amount of time. Do they see it that way? Probably not. You produced something decent and hopefully it will assist in landing more sales. I stress hopefully.

It is important that the designer always always always know the message that needs to be supported through the finished piece. Only then will a designer be able to communicate the business-value to the company and justify spending more time in the planning process and less time just cranking out ‘pretty-looking’ things.

Here are some very important things graphic designers and marketers should work together on prior to hitting production.

• Brainstorm – Start with the brand. If the brand is all about ‘fun’, start writing down anything and everything you can think of having to do with fun. EVERYTHING. Don’t critique your thoughts, just jot them down. See how many you can do in a minute. Write them on post-its. Put them on your wall.
• Reverse Brainstorm – Write down everything you can think of in a minute that conveys the opposite message of your brand. What is not ‘fun’?
• Focus In – When you narrow things down a bit, then you can start to ask questions like, “Out of these 50 typefaces, which ones convey the feeling of ‘fun’ the most?”
• Design Elements – Think about the design elements: Line, shape, value, texture and color what helps the concept of fun? Avoid design elements that make it look pretty but don’t support your message.
• Keep The Phases Separate – Plan first. When you get to the design phase, don’t focus on editing or refinement no matter how sloppy or stupid you think something is. You’re going for concept quantity. Once you have a plethora (I love that word) of concepts then you can go in and tweak them. It’s very hard not to tweak designs as you go if you know in your head it looks unfinished. Trust me I know.

Remember the focus isn’t on designing something good it is on supporting the brand and message. In this process you are paving the way to supporting your time spent in research and planning. If every step you make is reinforcing your brand, it suddenly has business value. That translates to revenue. If upper management can associate your design and marketing research with business value, bingo! Everyone’s on the road to better communication and better success as a business.