WE KEEP IT SIMPLE
Coming Soon
CLIENTS REQUESTS
CHAPTERS
We recommend to read through the whole thing, but you can click on the following tabs to go directly to the related content.
We take in serious considerations all the requests we get, and we deal with them in a specific and unique way each time, depending on the specific case.
However, we do follow a consistent process style, to be able to assure to each single client that they will get a professional work, and you can have an idea of our process just by taking a look at the following scheme.
If you are a business owner, or any professional that asked for our help, this is, briefly, what you would get from us:
BRIEFING - We will get to meet you, to know you and your brand. We will discuss your desires and needs, your objectives, and we will make a draft of what we will do together.
RESEARCH - We will immediately start to look for potential solution for you; thus, we will research your business area characteristics, what already exists (not to make doubles), and keep you unique.
BRAINSTORMING - A brainstorming process will bring together all the possible ideas to start with, and to develop further on. We will start from these ideas, and make and evaluate the best possibilities for you.
SKETCHING - Once all the ideas are formed and ranked, we will start producing the early designs sketches. These will help getting a better visual idea of how to proceed. We will be in touch with you during this process.
SELECTION OF THE DESIGN(S) - It is now time for us to select the design that is right for you, to refine it, and to produce it in the final versions that we will present to you.
PRESENTATION - We got it, you get it! It is now the time for you to see the final product, and it is now the perfect time for you to provide your valuable final feedbacks so that the last minor changes can be done to the design.
REVISION(S) - If agreed, we will provide one or more revisions for your design, so that we can make every details perfect for your brand, and for you.
DELIVERY - Everything is ready, we can now provide all the designs we produced for you, inclusive off in depth and extremely detail informations and explanations regarding the whole creative process.
Keeping all of this in mind, each client and each request is anyway different, so you can't simply apply a fixed rule to provide a good service; this is why, when you meet a client for the first time, the first two points of this scheme are extremely important.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
When you first get contacted by a potential client, it is crucial to listen carefully at what they ask you to do, and how much details they will provide. It is very common for the request to be just very general, vague. Many companies, in most of the cases, will just tell you that they want to "improve their business" situation, increase sales, look nicer, and so on.
This is really understandable since they are not the expert in what they ask you to do, they just want you to help them, which is why they called you at first!
For this reason, after you noted down all their requests and desires, it is crucial to also get the most out of that first call, asking already few details and, necessarily, fixing a meeting where you can ask your questions, to prepare the best possible strategy for that specific case.
Here you can find some of the most useful information to retrieve, and questions to ask to your clients (in case they didn't provide these informations already, of course), and to yourself too, in order to provide the best possible service to them:
WHY DO THEY WANT YOUR HELP?
Why do they want your help? Are they a new company? Do they experience bad sales and want to improve they visual identity to be more appealing to their customers? Maybe they just desire to refresh the look? Or what else?
WHY DO THEY WANT IT NOW?
Maybe they didn't know anything about graphic design possibilities? Maybe they tried with someone else but it didn't work as expected? In any of these cases, why now?
WHAT KIND OF EXPECTATIONS DO THEY HAVE?
It is important to know what do they expect to obtain from your work, and how much they rely exclusively on you to obtain miraculous results; you can help a company with their business visual identity, you can do a lot to help them having a better results, and more effective user experience though a better and more efficient design, but your job is not to save a business if they only focus on design! Design can have a huge impact on sales, but a business is also much more, so remember to carefully consider what your client expectations are, and bring them to realistic expectations too, if needed! This is a call to honesty, professionalism and will avoid unpleasant situation in the near future for you, and your client.
DO THEY HAVE SOMETHING ALREADY ON THEIR MIND?
If they have already some ideas, such as colors to use, logo sketches, or anything that should be your job to produce and provide, discuss and consider with them if these are good ideas or not, if it is the case to use them or, at the contary, you want to prioritise your ideas. Remember that this is a key factor to discuss before you start to do anything, because it will deeply interfere with your possibilities once you decide what to do regarding this point.
HOW MUCH CONTROL DO THEY WANT TO HAVE ON YOUR WORK?
Of course this is difficult to ask, but you need to know this. And it is important to clarify this with your clients, it is not a matter of mistrust in their ideas, it is simply a matter of professionalism: they hire you because they trust you and your skills to help them by delivering a professional and high quality result. If they want to have total control over your project, it means that they simply misunderstood your role.
We are not saying that you can't discuss and find compromises based on what your clients desire, but we are saying that you are the professional designer, and they hire you for that reason. Be confident, if you don't feel so, decline that project.
WHAT IS THE FEELING THEY WANT TO COMUNICATE?
Design is a lot about feelings. Each company wants to communicate something: strength, friendship, love, confidence, power, and many many more, often also a combinations of several of these! Ask them what they desire, research what their business branch usually aims to and how it achieve this, and ask yourself how you could do it better.
Better, for Nevra Arts, means: simpler, faster, and in a more convincing way than before and than competitors.
WHO ARE THEIR MAIN COMPETITORS?
As just mentioned here above, knowing your clients' direct and most successful competitors, is a crucial information to have, as you have to deal with them and their visual strategy when you are working on your client's project.
You never have to copy anything from the competitors, for honesty, and because you are a creative, so you should create something new and specific for your client, but you can always learn from other's work, you can study what is working and what are the weaknesses.
These information will help you in creating something that not only will work in general, but it will transform others weakness to a strength point for your client.
WHO IS THEIR TARGET?
Designing for a company is not only about designing something nice, actually, as you might read more into details here, it is manly about designing something that is functional to the scope of the client, and that is efficient in doing what it had to do, better than how competitors do.
To do this, you need to deeply understand who is the main target for this client: average age, gender prevalence, main interests, and as many information about this you can get.
If the client produces toys for kids, the main target are the parents of these kids, and the kids themselves. You will be driven by this information, and probably delivering a colorful, playful design, but also delivering a professional look, that attracts both the kids and their parents.
OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO ASK
We could go on with so many other questions, because depending on the situation, you always need to know something more, or something different.
For these final questions, we will list four last important information here below:
1) If they called you, they probably saw some of your works: did they see anything that feels like something they might want for them too? We are talking about the style, the colors, the mood, and so on.
2) Is there a specific deadline for this work to be ready? Decline projects that have deadlines too close for the project to be done in the best possible way.
3) Is there a specific budget they have for this project? It is important to know this, as you will need to know if you can deliver what they want, with the amount of working time they can afford. Decline works you can't do at your best, it is not good for your client, and for you neither, to deliver a not well done project.
4) What is the design used for: web, printings, both? Small or big dimensions? and so on.
As you can see, we are really precise when it comes to be organized, and we deeply desire to deliver quality products that can fulfil our client request, in the most efficient way possible. If you want to know more about what we consider efficient and why, keep reading the other insights!