1. Creative brief

The creative brief sets the tone for the entire project. It's the first and arguably one of the most important steps in the visual design process.
A creative brief is a document that’s aimed to help the designer understand the scope of the project and what’s needed from them. You’ll want to include as much relevant information as possible to reduce any confusion, and as a result, back and forth.

Be sure to include the following in your brief:

• Budget.
• Company details.
• Brand guidelines.
• Target audience.
• What the final product should be (I.e. brochure, eBook, etc).
• Timeline expectations and milestones.
• What you intend viewers to do when they see the final product.
• Examples of similar work you like (and don’t).

2. Conduct graphic design research

Depending on the scope of the project, you’ll want to include as much valuable information in your creative brief to minimize the time spent in this step. However, it’s still extremely valuable for designers to go through the researching phase themselves to build a better understanding of the audience they’re designing for (and how to make it work for you).

The research phase of the graphic design process often involves things like:

• Looking at competitor designs.
• Look at what the intended audience is engaging with on channels like social media.
• Taking all of the knowledge they’ve learned and applying it to the project at hand.

Designers may also want to create a mood board or collection of comparable designs at this stage in order to get their ideas flowing. More on that below!

3. Brainstorm your ideas

Before a designer goes full-throttle into a project, have them brainstorm some ideas and present them to you. This will minimize any frustration throughout the creative process. Don’t forget to outline this step in your creative brief!
If the project owner (who created the brief) has really strong ideas on how the final designs should look, it’s best for them to add in any relevant links or inspiration into the brief for optimal clarity.
Once the designer presents 3-5 ideas from their brainstorming session, decide on which one you want to move forward with. This will make for a smooth graphic design workflow process that gets you the best results, fast.

4. Review at the 10/50/99 stage

When determining your milestones in your creative brief, be sure to check in with designers throughout the design process. The 10/50/99 feedback process ensures that you’re checking in at the most crucial parts of a project, allowing you to give the right feedback at the right time:

• 10% done — A skeleton, outline or wireframe of the final design. At this stage, you can give feedback on the vision and direction that the work is headed in.
• 50% done — The core components are coming together. The direction is no longer at debate so leave that feedback at the door. Instead, focus on whether or not the vision you determined is being visualized in the design.
• 99% done — The nitty-gritty design tweaks. Finally! You can start tweaking things like spacing, colours, you name it.

Often, people will break these review rules and start giving feedback on things like colour choice or fonts at a stage where the designer has only outlined a skeleton. This is not only frustrating for the designer, it’s unproductive! Make sure to follow the above design review stages to keep your projects moving along smoothly.

5. Present the final product

The design is complete. It’s time to get the final files (and invoice if working with an external design resource) and put the designs into action. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your designer for feedback on how they found the process, what they feel could be improved or tweaked and then iterate your process. Over time, you’ll be able to scale your design process effectively.

Step 1: Research

At this stage, you will collect all the information that will be required for decision making in the next stages. Information collected during the research will become your raw material to strategize & create your digital marketing campaign. This stage can also be called as Digital Marketing Research. At this stage, you will research 4 sets of information:

Be sure to include the following in your brief:

• 1. About Business
• 2. About Your Target Customers
• 3. About Online Competition
• 4. About The Product That You Want To Market

Each set is unique & equally important. You will require multiple sources to collect the information.

Step 2: Create

Once you collect information at the research stage, you can now start creating:

The research phase of the graphic design process often involves things like:

• 1 – Digital Marketing Objectives / Goals: These are the ultimate goals that you want to achieve through your Digital Marketing Campaign. Every business is unique, therefore their goals will also be unique. Campaigns without clear goals will end up spending money without the assurance of achieving goals. What goals you should set, can be answered after looking at information collected at the Digital Marketing Research stage.  Learn more about Digital Marketing Objectives / Goals.
• 2 – Digital Marketing Strategy: After you set the goals, it’s time to create a strategy to achieve those goals. Your Digital Marketing Strategy will include Positioning Strategy, Branding Strategy, Content Strategy, Digital Marketing Channels Strategy. What strategy should be adapted/created, will be answered from the information collected at the Digital Marketing Research stage.

Step 3: Promote

After your primary digital identities are fully ready, you will start promoting them. That means you want relevant people to start coming to your primary digital identities. This is also called as generating relevant traffic. Relevant traffic is an important word here.

The more you get relevant traffic to your website, the more the conversion you can expect. Your options to promote your website/blog / app will be:

• 1.Search Engines
• 2.Display Network
• 3.Ecommerce Portals
• 4.Social Media
• 5.Email
• 6.Messaging
• 7.Affiliate

The above are also known as Digital Marketing Channels, which you need to promote your Primary Digital Identities (Website / Blog / App). There are sub-channels & networks within some of the channels mentioned above.
Which channels, subchannels, networks to go for & whether to do organic or inorganic promotions, these questions will already be answered at the Digital Marketing Strategy creation stage.

Step 4: Analyse

Once you create your primary digital identities & start promoting them through various digital marketing channels, it’s time to start monitoring your performance. Analysing is like looking at the outcome of your digital marketing work. You will receive analytics for your primary digital identities, as well as the channels through which you have done the promotions.

The most important & ultimate analytics for any business is the analytics of your website/blog / app. Google Analytics is widely popular to generate analytics of your primary digital identities. The 4 major sections of Google Analytics are:

• 1.Audiences
• 2.Acquisition
• 3.Behaviour
• 4.Conversion

Step 5: Optimize

At this stage, based on analysis & observations, you start making changes (fine-tuning). The changes could be in your primary digital identities or digital marketing channels. Changes are also referred to as content & design of your identities & promotional communication.