Design is often called as a luxury, a good to have accessory. Well, the truth is far different from this perception. Design, if made with perfection and affordability, it can be the utmost means of making money for your organization. However, it requires a lot of strategy and dedication to making designs affordable and effective for your organization.
If you have been asked for cost-cutting and reduction from your organization heads, you are not alone in this realm. Almost every team of design professional is told to cut the cost and make designs affordable. However, it does not mean that you cannot adopt better strategies and make designs effective. Design is something that helps your organization become a brand and earn recognition across the market, therefore, it shall not be neglected or tossed around.
In this blog post, we have covered the top four ways to make designs affordable and effective for your organization.
Let’s dive in and learn the tactics to make designs affordable and effective here.
Organize Your Design Team –
The way your design team has been organized has to do a lot with your organizational performance. The better your team would be organized, the more profit you will make as an outcome.
There are three basic team structures followed within the most organization including,
Centralized Design Teams –
This design team structure is usually comprised of an individual unit inside the company and is also responsible to cater design requests from across the organization. Though such a mixed team structure causes various problems to the quality and effectiveness of designs, it is the most used structure within organizations. The major con of such teams is that they are sometimes overloaded with work while other times, there isn’t enough work to consume all the individuals within the team.
Cross-functional Design Teams –
In such of kind of design team, there are designers assigned to each different team according to the needs and requirements. This structure is incorporated quite often and is considered as one of the best means to make designs affordable and effective for organizations.
Flexible Design Teams –
In such kinds of teams, designs are either obtained from outsourcing companies and freelance design platforms, etc. This is considered to be the best means to make designs affordable and effective for organizations. It saves your cost as well as provides you with an opportunity to take your designs uphill with quality brand recognition.
Whether you have an instant design request or you need an incredible campaign run over social media platforms, outsourcing companies like brandsdesign are always at your ease. All you need to do is just hire a designer and get matched with incredible designers for a month without the hassle of an interview and other related liabilities.
Smoothen Your Design Process –
A lot of organizations aren’t likely to pay a lot of attention to the design process. However, this is the foremost step to make designs affordable and effective for organizations.
It’s a common practice within design teams to pass on design requests via emails, project management tools, and even while passing by the designer. This can put the most negative impacts on the quality of your design. It causes a lack of communication, resulting in the creation of incorrect designs, waste of designer’s energy and time, back to back revisions, and declination of design quality, etc.
The best means of smoothening your design process is to incorporate a solid step by step system. Design briefs are of greatest significance when it comes to the smoothening of the design process. To provide the designer with an adequate design brief is the utmost means to make designs affordable and effective. It will help the designer in creating accurate designs as well as keep things in the document for a record.
Here’s the list of things that every creative brief shall possess –
- The audience that needs to be addressed
- A complete description of the project for which the designs are required (such as, an email campaign, a social media platform, or website pages, etc.)
- An action plan for the project outlining the milestones expected
- Examples and inspirations of the design outcome that is expected from the designer
Thence, providing such a design brief to the designers can surely smoothen the process and be a means to make designs affordable and effective for the organizations.
Evaluate Your Designs –
It is always fruitful when you evaluate things at your end and try making them better beforehand. To make designs affordable and effective, their evaluation before handing them over to the client is the greatest deed. It can save you from back to back revisions, the dissatisfaction of the clients, and everything that might impact your cost and reputation. How to evaluate your designs? Well, that’s easier. Just go through the design brief one last time once the design is ready.
Make sure everything is up to the mark and as per requirements and make the updates and changes if and when required. Tada! You’re ready to bloom with all the perfect and incredible designs.
Optimize Your Feedback Loop –
Design requires time and effort. You cannot just toss around your fingers and come up with something aesthetic and inspiration. And of what value, your time, and effort are when your design does not satisfy the requirements of your client? Zero. But wait, there’s something to save you from the loss and that’s the timely optimization of your feedback loop.
When it comes to design, taking feedbacks is always good. Either constructive or destructive, it surely helps you find a way out to make your designs better every time. However, it’s always good to follow a proper timeline and so is the case with feedback. You do not have to ask for feedback from everyone and at every inch of your design. Thence, you should follow the 10∕50∕99 feedback approach. It breaks down into the three following stages –
- 10% – Once you’ve read through the creative design brief, outline what’s been understood and take feedback from your immediate team members.
- 50% – Once the foundation of your design is achieved. Things are coming together and are capable to convey the outcome, this is the time to get your design approved by the stakeholders involved. This can be the deciding point. Either you’ll get a way ahead or you’ll have to rework on the design.
- 99% – This is the time when your design is all ready and only the final tweaks are left. The final decision-makers shall be asked for the feedback at this moment.
To Put It All Condensed –
Reached till here? You must now know that good design doesn’t need to be costly and expensive. However, it requires an organized design team, a smoothened design process, a proper design evaluation, and optimization of the feedback loop to make designs affordable and effective. Whether your company is cost-cutting due to the covid19 crises or are looking forward to a more expanded and revenue-generating business, you can surely take help from the above guidelines.
Thence, it’s always good to keep your design team flexible, provide them with foolproof creative briefs, keep a check, and evaluate designs, as well as maintain an optimized feedback loop.