Here at Media Prowler, we often don’t get the opportunity to work directly with our end clients, which can sometimes lead to “Designing in the Dark.” The lack of direct communication sometimes makes design challenging, and often times results in far more revisions and delays than anyone involved would like. In this post we’ll let you in on the most helpful things that you or your clients can provide to minimize the number of revisions when we’re creating an ad from scratch.
1. Details
If there’s one thing that’s the most important for our creative team it’s details and specifics about what the client is looking for. It’s very difficult to guess what people from such varied backgrounds are looking for! See our Creative Guidelines for some some ideas of what we’re looking for. We’re happy to take liberties with design and come up with something from scratch, but if the client has definite ideas make sure they’re communicated clearly. If it’s not provided in the creative directions, it’s open to interpretation, and as with all types of design, our creative team may not have the same ideas as the client.
2. Color Palettes
Provide some direction as to colors you like. If you have a website with the colors you like, provide a URL and we’re happy to use the colors directly off the site. The more specific the color directions are the better, however we can work with things like “Reds and grays”, or “Mainly blue.” Some descriptive words, like shiny or exciting, don’t necessarily help our team, as those terms are subjective, and open to varying interpretations. What’s exciting to Partners and/or Clients may not be to our design team, and interpretations can be vastly different.
3. Stock Photos
If you can provide the actual photos you’d like to use, that’s the best case scenario. If you can’t, or for some reason don’t want to provide an exact photo, please provide some guidance as to the type of photo and message you want your stock photo to convey. Include a similar picture and highlight what you do or don’t like about it. Once again, the more specific you can be, the quicker we’ll be able to get your design to be what you’re looking for. (e.g. I like the fact that this photo has a blue sky, but can you find one that has an Autumn feel for the trees?)
4. Additional Graphics
When you enlist our design services we’re happy to create some graphics for you if you’d like. Most often our design team will look for an outstanding fact in your email, as those make the best infographics. Once again, it’s best to be specific in your requests.
Revisions
We all know it’s going to happen, no matter how specific or direct the instructions are, there will be things that will need changing. The most helpful way for our design team to deal with these requests is to deal with as many as possible at once. While we understand that there are multiple levels of revisions, some from partners and some from the end clients, it’s helpful if we can get as many of those at the same time as we can. We’d suggest making sure the end client sees as many of the revisions as possible to simplify the process.
Conclusion
We hope this will help you to understand the most beneficial information that you can provide to our creative team to make your design match your expectations as quickly as possible. We hope that you’ll reach out to our creative team to help you get your message across through a customized email campaign!
