I've had many meetings with clients in my nearly 20 years of commercial design experience. In that time I've learned that there are 5 key questions that need to be discussed between client and designer.

In the following video you will learn what these 5 key questions are, and, by knowing and working on your own answers to them, you'll have a great start to any new design project you start with your chosen graphic designer.

Five questions that your graphic designer should ask you before you start any project.

Hi everyone, it's Col here from Pixels Ink. Today I'm going to do a quick video on the five questions that I always ask my design clients when they come in to start a new project.

What is the purpose of the project?
Is it to raise awareness of a new product or service? Are they trying to direct more traffic to the website? Maybe they have a retail location that they want to get higher footfall or maybe they have a discount coupon and they need to create a voucher that's going to get people to spend more money with them. By having a purpose or a target for the project then that lets the designer get their creative wheels going so that they can come up with an answer to your problem.

Who's the target audience?
Something designed for the teenage market is not going to be the same if you were trying to target the over fifties. It's important that you let your designer know if there is going to be a specific and focused group for the project. Other things that you could take into account might be their geographical location, or maybe it's gender specific, male or female. Again, by letting your designer know, it will ensure that the project goes down the path that it's suitable for your target audience.

What is the budget of the project?
That's often the one that a client is frightened of. (A), they're frightened that they may suggest a budget which is too small and they'll be embarrassed, or they don't want to suggest a budget which they may think in their head is too high and they don't want to have the designer going, "Oh, they've got a massive budget. Let's spend all that money." That really is not the case. By letting the designer know what budget you have, then they can decide whether what you've asked for can be done within the budget that you have available, or if we need to look at other options or roots that can work with the budget that you have. If you can, please let the designer know what money is available for the project that you want to get started.

Is there a project deadline?
If you've got a specifically tight deadline, maybe you've got an exhibition coming up or you've got an opening date, then the designer may well have to charge you what's known as a rush fee, this will be to put in extra hours to make sure that your design is completed on time. If there is no real specific timeline or date that needs to be met, then what the designer should do is, (A) they will give you the quote for the project, but they should also give you a timeline. This should have goals, milestones, and a completion date. That way everyone knows where the project should be at any given moment in time.

Creative direction, do you have any?
You can help out the designer a lot by letting them know if you have any brand guidelines, which will let them know whether they have to stick to a specific colour palette, use specific fonts, and any logos that need to be used within the project. If you don't have any brand guidelines, maybe you're a small company and you've not got to that stage yet, then even if you've seen some printed materials that you like or some website graphics that you've seen, anything that you can provide the designer with will ensure that the project gets off to a quicker start, because that way the designer is not going to produce some early concepts using logos, fonts, colours, that really are not to your taste. If you can help at the beginning by giving some creative guidelines, then you'll really get off to a good start with your designer.

Summary
Those are the five questions that I ask of all of my design clients. Let's quickly recap what those are. Number one is, what is the purpose or the goal of the project? Number two, who is the target audience? Number three, what is the budget for the project? Number four, is there a project deadline? Number five, do you have any creative guidance for me on this project? That's today's video. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you have, make sure you subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and give the video a thumbs up, even leave a comment or a question, it all helps. Until next time, stay creative.