Graphic Design Theory - Process of Design

1. Introduction: Most people think of the creative process as this strange artistic activity that has no structure and follows no rules. However, this cannot be further from the truth. The creative process relies on careful planning, research, ideation, and many other stages which are all essential for producing successful designs. In this course, we will dive deep into all of these stages and learn about every step involved from defining the brief to the final delivery of a project. About the importance of a design contract, why you should always present multiple concepts to your client, how you should organize your creative projects, how to put together an amazing portfolio, how to win design competitions, and so much more. By the end of this course, you will be ready to take on any creative projects with confidence. Together with the exciting class project that I hope you will complete at the end of the course, you also have the analysis worksheet and the term glossary to help you practice everything that you've learned. I hope you are just as excited as I am to get started and dive into the sea of knowledge and beautiful graphic design examples. 2. The creative process: Anyone can be creative. It is not a skill or talent. It is more like a mindset or way of thinking. And the creative process might sound like a strange term to some, it might even sound contradictory. Because on one hand, creativity is something that is usually associated with free thinking and coming up with new ideas. While the word process we normally use for things that can be automated, repeated, and done the same way every time. So how does these two aspects can be merged together? The free thinking and the rigid structured way of working. This is what I'm going to explore in more detail in this video. And of course, this is the foundation of the whole design process because creativity or creative thinking is essential for every graphic designer. So remember I mentioned that I don't like to think of creativity as a skill. However, if we are thinking of other skills similarly important to creativity, then it would be communication, time management, technology or technical skills and typography. And out of all of these, creativity is definitely the hardest one to explain and the easiest to have doubts about whether someone is creative enough to be a graphic designer. This illustration as well, my favorite way of thinking of creativity. So on one hand, we have knowledge and that's something that we learn or we understand. But to be able to use that knowledge, we also need experience. And that is basically how often or how many times the reuse a particular knowledge in action or to put it into a project or something that we are working on. So this is when the dots are getting already connected and between different solution or ideas, we already start to form relations and we start to come up with practical ways of using our knowledge scientifically. This is something that is referred to as neural pathways. Commonly used steps or actions become second nature and we can almost do it without thinking. But why these routines are fairly structured and rigid to come up with creative ideas or solutions, we have to think outside of the box. And that's again, another term that is very commonly used, but it is really well-explained with this simple illustration here, where instead of connecting these dots with those rigid linear lines, we look beyond the obvious solution and we come up with something original and unique. There's another very common and well-known way of dividing the creative process into four stages, which is similar to the previous way of explaining how it works. So we can think of the preparation phase as the knowledge. So it could be something that we are already familiar with. Maybe we've done research in the past or maybe we read about something that we need to work on. But it can also be a topic that is still new to us, which means we have to go out and do market research or we have to gather some inspiration before we can start to process that knowledge, which can be referred to as the incubation stage. This is when we digest information and we've tried to establish connections of relations between various ideas and depending on the complexity of a creative project, these 2 first stages can take up to a couple of hours, a couple of days, or even a couple of months. But the actual moment when we are starting to come up with creative ideas and we get that little light bulb moments is what we refer to as the illumination stage. So this is where all the hard work that we put in initially in the first two stages start to come into fruition. Now, believe me, it is very rare for someone to be able to come up with something original and creative without further spending time on these first two stages, preparation and incubation. Especially when as a graphic designer, we are given a specific brief that we have to answer with a creative solution. It is always easier to think outside of the box where there's actually no books at all. So for instance, if you're working on a personal project and there is no actual brief that you are trying to answer, then of course it is much easier in a way to be creative compared to when you're working for an actual client. We then actual brief. But there is one last very important stage of the creative process and that is verification, which means that we need to check and test whether the idea or solution that we came up with is actually going to work. So this can be done through user testing, asking people around us, presenting to the client of course, and in case we were right and ideas seems to be working, then all we have to do is to refine it based on the feedback that we got. But in case during this verification stage, we find out that actually we were wrong and the concept that we came up is not working for some reason, then normally we will have to go back to the incubation stage. And think of other concepts or these that we can solve the brief. The worst-case scenario is when we have to start from scratch, where we actually find out that even the preparation or the research that we've done is either not right or not complete. And it is very important to understand that the creative process is very rarely neat and linear like this. Usually there's a lot of going back and forth between these stages, which doesn't mean that you are not good at graphic design. On the contrary, it means that you care about what you are designing and what your client is going to receive from you at the end, being able to accept that you are wrong is a crucial part of the creative process and it is a crucial skill for every creative professional. This is also another brilliant way of thinking about the creative process that we start out with. A chaotic mess that through iteration and several attempts after feeling becomes clearer and clearer and closer and closer to what's actually going to solve the brief. And I love this quote from the amazing Paula share from pentagram is through mistakes that you actually can grow. Believed me she is not the only creative person who says something similar to this. You can find similar codes from other creative geniuses like Steve Jobs or a Salvador Dali. But another one that I particularly like is from Pablo Picasso, who said Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working and working hard is just another way of saying that you're committed and you don't mind going back to the drawing board and restart if you need to or accept that something that you came up with an initially thought is a brilliant idea, doesn't actually work. Although this diagram is more of a joke, it does actually show a very important element of every creative project. And that is the deadline. Now, without the deadline or without some form of pressure, it is very hard to achieve something or to produce a final product. So even though being accountable might sounds restrictive, and it might sound that it could hinder our creative process. It's actually a crucial factor or element of it when you have complete creative freedom and you have no restrictions at all, most likely you will be stuck in this limbo where nothing actually is getting done. Here's another great illustration from Stephanie positive eg, which shows really well that to get to a great idea, we first have to go through a lot of bad ideas and some of which might not even be bad ideas, and we may even be able to use them in other projects. However, they just simply don't work for that particular brief that we are working on. So to summarize and recap what we went through in this video, anyone can be creative who is willing to put the extra work into a project, and who is not afraid of making mistakes. Now that we made that clear in the next video, we can talk about the four types of creativity and how we use our brain to be creative. 3. Four types of creativity: He must have heard about the differentiation between the left and the right side of the brain, and that we use the left side of our brain for more systematic thinking and being more analytical. While the right side of our brain is responsible for more intuitive and visual thinking, which of course is very important for being creative. Now even though this is an oversimplification of a very complex neurological system, our brain. I still like to talk about it because I feel like it perfectly symbolizes what explains the two types of mindset every creative has to be able to work in. So to be a graphic designer, you will have to use both sides of your brain pretty much equally. You can't rely purely on the right side or the creative side. So that's what we would normally associate with artists and musicians. And the left side of the brain usually associated with professions like engineers or doctors at graphic designer or designers in general, will have to be able to switch between these two mindsets constantly. Remember we call it design process or creative process. And for any process you have to be systematic and naturally to be able to produce good work, you always have to be also detail-oriented. Later on in this course, when we talk about ideation, we will explore a couple of techniques that you can use to be able to switch back and forth between these two states of mind in order to be able to go from a systematic thinking to being more playful, almost like a child, and to be able to turn your intuitive ideas into more rational solutions. Once again, that will work for a particular brief. But let's dive a little deeper. Instead of just thinking of the two different sides of the brain, there is a diagram created by R&D trick which shows the four types of creativity. This is from her work called the neuroscience of creativity. And on one hand, we have the differentiation between spontaneous or deliberate way of thinking or creativity. And on the other hand, we have either cognitive or emotional way of thinking. And by combining these, we get the four types of creativity. But it is important to mention that as a graphic designer, you are not going to fall into either one of these categories. Instead, you will be shifting and switching between them, depending on what works best for our project or which particular way of thinking is going to help you get through a creative block or reach a particular goal in your project. So first let's talk about cognitive and deliberate creativity for which a perfect example is Thomas Edison. But we can think of a lot of other scientists and engineers as well. And this is a form of creativity where we rely more on the actual thinking and forming connections between information or knowledge stored in our brain. The complete opposite of this state of mind is the spontaneous and emotional creativity, which mainly utilizes the part of the brain called the amygdala that is actually responsible for basic or core emotions. So this is the more intuitive or playful type of creativity. But then we also have spontaneous and cognitive type of creativity, which still requires some knowledge of the subject. But the solution usually comes to you when you are not thinking about it. And then lastly, we have also the deliberate and emotional type of creativity, which mainly relies on breakthrough moments or realize from analyzing our emotions. And this is something that can be triggered usually during psychotherapy or even during meditation. So the reason why it is important to understand that there are different ways of being creative. Because as a graphic designer, you will have to be able to utilize all of these different ways of being creative, depending on whatever is going to work best for a particular project. And here's a great little illustration that shows whenever you hit a creative block, so basically you are stuck and new ideas are coming. What can you do to get out of that rut and get going again and continue your work. And sometimes the simplest solution is to simply stop working, walk away, have a coffee, read the book, walk outside, listen to some music, or even watch a movie or play a game. And while you are now concentrating on a solution, it might just simply come to you. Or maybe when you come back to your work, you will have a fresh eyes and you will be able to think more clearly and come up with new solutions or unique ideas. Similarly to making mistakes, creative blocks are also part of the process. So it's not something that you need to avoid. It's actually something that you must go through almost in every project. And it's actually most commonly caused by the fear of imperfection or the feeling that you're not good enough to see through an idea. Unfortunately, most creatives are perfectionists. So that is why it is so common that we hit these creative blocks. But as long as you accept that it is part of the process, you won't have to fear it. And there's another quote by the comedian John Cleves that I love, which again explains really well that sometimes ideas are just coming out of the blue and we have to pay attention and make space for them to come to us. So he says, inspiration comes to us as images, hints, and feelings from the unconscious that we have to interpret. The unconscious is highly intelligent, but it is unconscious so we have limited control over it. And that is just another way of explaining how complex creativity is. So on one hand, it is intuitive, playful, unconscious, but by dedicating time for it and establishing a space where it can come to us. We can gain some form of control over it. 4. Tools of the trade: In this topic, the process of design, we are not actually going to focus a lot on the design stage. That is something that we cover more in the other topics like the print design and web and digital design, where we go into more detail on the various types of projects that you can work on as a graphic designer. Since the type of work that you do during the design stage really varies depending on what type of project you're working on. Whether it is a logo design, a poster, or a mobile app. But what is common for most of these types of projects are the tools that you are going to use. And since I am an Adobe instructor, starting with the creative applications, now, even though there are a lot of options, I am going to focus on the Adobe Creative Cloud because this is the most widely used professional software that you will be required to learn whenever you are applying for creative jobs. And undoubtably out of all of the Adobe tools. The three most important ones will be Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. And in case you are specializing in web and digital design, then you also have to add Adobe XD to the list. Now, very common question that I get asked by most students learning graphic design or starting out is, which is the tool that they should be spending more time in, or which is the one that they should learn the best, whether it's Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. And I usually give them an answer that they don't particularly like, because in my opinion, they are equally important. So there shouldn't be one application that you favor over the others. Because all of them have a very important role to play within the graphic design workflow. And you should be thinking of them more as a team or how a team would work well, when everyone gets a chance to incorporate their ideas or skills, instead of favoring one particular person and ignore the others. Having said that, when we start talking about specialization within graphic design, these applications can become the primary tool for a creative professional. Like for instance, Illustrator is clearly going to be the main tool used by illustrators and logo designers. But it is a toll not recommended for creating multi-page documents or photorealistic compositions. So even if you are an illustrator, you have to do these type of things. You will need to be able to use InDesign and also photoshop effectively. Now, these are all robust applications and there are so many features in them. But the good news is that once you learn one of them, the others are usually easier to pick up because there's a lot of similarities between them. And since the introduction of Creative Cloud integration between these applications is also getting better and better every year, which makes the lines of creatives are much easier. On one hand, a technique that you learned in my application will most likely work very similarly in the other tools. But more importantly, by using shared features like CC libraries, you will be able to also share assets and reuse them in all of these applications. So for instance, you can create a color palette and some character and paragraph styles for formatting texts that you will be able to access from Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. And if you make changes in one place, it will also affect the other design excreted in the other tools. Now although in this course we are using these tools for creative exercises, we are not covering them for beginners. And in case you are completely new to them, I highly recommend to check out my masterclass series, which will always start at the very basics like creating a new document. But by the end, you will definitely master these tools and you will also better understand their role within the creative workflow. Besides the design applications, it is also important to talk a little bit about the devices and the workspace, since these are also essential for every graphic designer and creative professionals in general. By looking at these photos, you might be thinking that it actually costs a lot to be a graphic designer, especially if you're a freelancer who has to invest a lot buying or this kit. But what I always say is even though it's great to work with these amazing tools, that it is much more important to be passionate, committed, and eager to learn new techniques then to own the best and most expensive equipment, you can make great work and be an amazing designer by having a cheap laptop. While if you're not willing to put effort into learning and working on creative projects. Having multiple color calibrated monitors and amazing computer, an iPad Pro lying around won't make any difference. So don't feel disheartened if you can't yet by the best kid out there. But in the long run, it is certainly a good idea to invest into getting better equipment because it's definitely going to help you to be more productive and effective in your work. Now, what's coming amongst most of these images is that there are multiple screens and that's certainly a good idea. You can see in my studio, I actually have three workstations. One that I use for graphic design and video editing, where I have an iMac Pro connected to another bank you monitor for illustration and digital work. I have a vacant syntax, again with another reference screen, which is another bank you monitor. And for photography work where I mainly use Lightroom, I would have my laptop connected to another color calibrated monitor. Series graphic design is very visual. Having multiple large screens is going to make your work easier. And it really comes down to experimenting and the personal preference, whatever setup works best for you. Even though I have been designing and illustrating for over 15 years, I still play around with my setup. For instance, you can see for awhile I was using my secondary screen, the reference monitor set in portrait or vertical format instead of the standard or default horizontal format. Because this works really well with the viewing angle while I was standing up. That's actually something that I also recommend. If you can get a desk with adjustable height, you will be able to choose whether you want to work standing up or sitting down. It's actually going to help you to improve your posture and be more healthy. But by switching between standing up and sitting down, you will also trigger different ways of thinking. So remember when we talked about creativity and the different states of creative thinking, simply just by changing your posture. So compared to working by sitting down or standing up, you will see that they actually does make a difference in coming up with fresh and new ideas surrounding yourself with inspiration and references where the rate is your own projects or the work of other artists and graphic designers is also a great way to stay creative and focus on the projects that you're working on. 5. The creative brief: Every creative projects should always start off with a brief. This is going to be the Bible or the guidelines throughout the whole project. And this is something that you have to keep coming back to without a good brief to begin with, you won't be able to achieve a successful design. Even when you're asked by a friend of yours to maybe design a logo or you are working on a self-initiated project that you are just doing to practice a certain technique, you should still always write a brief for yourself or ask your friend to provide you with a brief. This is going to help you to define what is the actual outcome that you have to achieve, which consists of the deliverables. So what type of files will be needed at the end, and where is this design going to be displayed or used? But more importantly, it needs to define the need that you as a designer is about to answer with your work. And this need could be as simple as the design of a wedding invitation card for one of your friends. Or as complex as the full re-branding of a massive international company. Like I said, the size or complexity of a design project doesn't make any difference. You should always start off with a brief. And what you should always remember is that a good brief is the responsibility of both the client and the designer. And believe me, whether you are working as a freelance designer or in an agency, whenever you are approached by a new client, you always have to get to know them first and understand how they like to brief you. There are clients who are extremely good at this and has a lot of experience working with creatives and explaining what they need, why with other clients, you will have to push hard and extract that information that you require to get started. Believe me, that it is actually very common that the clients don't actually know what they want, but they can explain why they need it. And that is why it is a good idea to have your own creative design brief template that you can always send to the client in the beginning, instead of relying on a never-ending email thread. Here, everything should be recorded properly at the very beginning. And this is going to save you a lot of time and asking questions later on when it's going to be much harder to make changes to the work that you already started. The brief should always start off with some information about the company and the contact details of the stakeholder that you will be working with and who is usually going to be your primary contact throughout the process, It's very important to have a description of the company and also the unique selling points. So why is this company different? What makes it unique? But besides knowing the business you are going to work for, it is almost as important to understand who is there competition and who is the audience that target audience that this design is created for? The objective or goal of a project should always be very prominent. It's one of the first things that you need to define. And I like to keep this area short so you don't want the client to go on about what they want to achieve. They need to be able to simplify in one or two sentences what the actual objective is. A good idea or so to define most of the time at the very beginning, the deadlines or the timeline, and also the budget that's available for this particular project. I am not going to talk about how much you should charge as a freelancer because it really varies depending where you are based and also of course, how experienced you are. And in general, it just really varies as well depending on the scope and type of project that you're working on. But no matter how much you are hoping to charge for a project or how much the client is willing to pay. It's always a good idea to define this at the very beginning and have it in a written form. So that way you can save yourself from a lot of headache and misunderstandings moving on. In case you are a freelancer, it is always a good idea to charge something up front. So the client needs to pay maybe 50 per cent of the project before the work can commence, and then the rest of the fee can be paid at the end once you deliver it, everything that was defined in the brief. Of course, it can be a very sensitive topic to bring up the budget at the very beginning when you're just meeting a new client, or if you are just starting out and you have that much experience yet as a designer, but unless you are willing to work for free, you should still ask this question and agree on an amount that is going to keep you motivated in working on this project. It happened to me many times, especially when I started out that are charged to less. And by the end, I dreaded working on these projects because I just didn't feel compensated enough for all the hard work that I'm putting into them. Unless you can agree on a budget that you are happy with, you shouldn't take the project on and respectfully decline it. And even though it is a horrible feeling of letting an opportunity or a client go is going to help you keep your sanity in the long run because you as a designer, hefty feel valued and that your work is valued by your customers. 6. What's inside a brief?: Another way of referring to the goal or objective of a project is the scope of a project. So that's also a good way of putting it in your template. And you may have also heard the term scope creep, which is what it usually in the creative industry is referred to when a project just keeps going on and on, because new goals are continuously added on and even the original goals are being changed to back-and-forth. That is a nightmare situation and you really want to avoid being in that position when you are stuck in a project and there is just no end in sight. This is again why it's so important to have a written brief like this where the scope is very specifically defined and if the client decides to add onto that original skull, you can always be flexible, but they find that as a separate project or as the second stage of your current project, but with its own timeline and budget as a general rule that you should keep in mind. And the way you should act as a creative professional is that whatever is defined in the scope and deliverables, you should always aim to exceed it. So under promise and over deliver, if you manage to do that, even if the client was planning to work with you on a single project, most likely they are going to come back to you in the future. And they might even recommend you as a designer to other companies, uh, besides the written part of the brief template that you create, depending on the type of projects that you are taking on. You can also include some visuals like this one, which particularly is useful for branding and identity design. The client will be able to define and choose between the different attributes that in this case are displayed as direct opposites of each other. So, for instance, on a scale between modern and classic, they can say exactly where they wish to define their brand. If they believe that it is more modern, they can say maybe it's somewhere around there or maybe it can be all the way to the left side, meaning that they definitely don't want to make it look like it's a classic design. They want to keep it completely modern. And besides sending your brief template to the clients as a PDF, you can also rely on more interactive and online ways of gathering the information. And there are many tools like Ola brief, which can help you in doing that. So this is a brilliant online tool with which you can gather the information from the client. And it can be a much more fun experience for them to go through all the questions that you're asking. So similarly to when the client can choose between the opposites of attributes, they will be able to define the brand personality by selecting images and simple explanations, or even using scales on how important something is for them. And most of these online tools will be very easy and quick to setup. And then you can save everything as your custom template that will be ready whenever you start a new project. Now whether you met the client face-to-face and you wrote down the brief yourself or whether you use the PDF or an online tool, it is always good together all the information that they provided and turn the brief into something that is a bit more visual like this sample graphic design brief on melanoma, where that original written template is turned into something much more visual and something that is easier to refer back to throughout the design process. So you can see that we have this first section about the client and the key person, our contact. Then a little bit about the brand and brand personalities and the main colors that they want to use for their brand. The main objective or scope of this project, and then the target audience. And some references, maybe from other brands or competitors that the client referenced as good examples for what they would like to achieve, no matter in what format you prefer to keep your brief, but remember to always keep it in front of you while you're working on the project because it is so easy to forget or overlook certain aspects that later on you will find actually was very important for the client. Believe me, there is nothing worse when a client clearly asked for something in the brief that you forgot to include in your final presentation. So remember these two things really well. Always start the creative project with a well-defined creative brief. This is going to be your guideline throughout the whole project. And don't forget to keep it always at hand in front of you. So you will never miss any aspects of it while you are working. 7. Contract: The creative brief should always go almost hand-in-hand with a contract. Now, even though you were not planning to become a lawyer when you decided to be a creative professional, you should still have a good contract template again at hand that you can use whenever you get started with a new client. And it's especially important with new clients. However, even when you've been working with a client for a while, you should still not agree to work on anything unless there is at least a simplified version of a contract that is signed by both parties. Now to make things easier, I actually included a sample contract here which I actually downloaded from Smashing Magazine. I believe this is a really good starting point. However, if you wish to use more complex contract templates, you can also find the AIGA standard form of agreement for design services PDF, which is probably one of the most detailed contracts that you can use as a designer. But in most cases, I like to keep the contract as straightforward and simple as possible. So let's just quickly walk through what are the most important things that should be included. Obviously, the payment, the terms and the amount should be defined and it's equally important to agree on what happens if the client is asking for changes. So in this sample contract, it says that the client must assume that all additions, alterations, changes in content, layout or process changes requested by the customer will alter the time and cost. This is mainly, again, to avoid that scope creep that we've talked about in the previous video. Similarly to changes is just as important to define what happens in terms of cancellation. So once again, you have to agree on the terms and what happens if the client cancels halfway through the project and you've done already several days or maybe even weeks of work. And another very important aspect to agree on is the ownership of the artwork that is produced. And in this contract, it states that the designer retains ownership of all original artwork and that if transfer of ownership of all writers desired, then the rates may be increased. So one thing to keep in mind and it's a good practice is that you should always keep your working file or project files and not give it out to the client unless they ask for this at the very beginning. But in that case, we should always charge more because once they have the working files, that means that they won't need to rely on you to make any changes in the future, especially in case they have an in-house designer or design team who will be able to make those changes. So there should always be a clear differentiation between the artwork that is ready for print or web and the original working files. But we will talk a little bit more about this later on in this course. So we will define more what counts as a working file and how you should be handling them when it comes to the final delivery stage of the design process. But going back to the question of the ownership of the artwork in the contract, you actually need to think about it as the intellectual property that you create throughout the process and how you wish to handle it or handed over to the client. And to simplify things, it's usually comes down to these four options. Full assignment, which means that you hand over all the intellectual property. So the client has complete an exclusive rights to the design with total freedom to modify it and make changes in the future. This is obviously the most favorable option for a client, and if you provide this option for them, that they most likely will go for it. But in case they specifically asked for this and it was not something that you would originally agreed to, then don't forget to charge extra for the full assignment of intellectual property. And it's also important to agree on the personal use aspect of the intellectual property. Which means that even if you want to just display the work that you create in your portfolio, this is something that the client should be agreeing to. But depending on the sensitivity of the project, the client might actually ask you to sign a non-disclosure agreement or NDA, which might actually prevent you to release anything about the work for a specific amount of time. For instance, in the past when I was in a creative agency and I worked on a project for Disney, it actually took two years before I could release anything about the project in my portfolio. It is quite painful when you just finished a project and you've done some really cool designs and you really want to share it with people or showcase it in your portfolio. But it is very important to stick to whatever you agreed at the very beginning. And once again, this is why it's so important to make these things clear in the contract. So remember, whenever you get started on a new project, the first two things you need, especially when you're working with a new client, is the brief and the contract. Once you have these in place, you can move on and start having a little bit more fun with the rest of the creative process. Starting with the next stage, research, which we will be covering in the next video. 8. How to do your research for a creative project: Remember when we talked about the four stages of the creative process, while research is still part of the first one called preparation. And just like it is so important to get a brief and the contract in place. It is also very important and essential for every creative project to have a proper research or market research conducted before any designing can begin. So what actually happens in the research stage and what are you supposed to produce by the end of it. So it is generally bad collecting information and data from interviews with the client, user feedback, online research and more. So why the brief was defining already the goals. The research is giving context to the project, and it is going to be crucial in defining the creative direction. Now, before we talk about the exciting stuff, like designing mood boards or the resources for inspiration, it's important to first ask the question whether it is better to do the research first and then start ideation or vice versa. Start with a brainstorm session, come up with some initial ideas and only after that, start conducting some research. Although it is possible that the doing the research is going to steer you into a particular direction and you might lose out on some original and unique ideas you may have come up with if you started off with ideation. But in general, I believe for most projects, it is actually better to start with the research. And only once you have the context defined properly, you can move on to do the ideation or anyway, don't feel restricted by this standard way of doing things. Feel free to experiment and see whatever works best for you. And in case you feel like that doing the research first always gives you a tunnel vision and you can't really come up with creative ideas anymore and you just keep copying whatever you've seen them. Probably it is actually better for you to get started with some sketches and only later on do the research. So doing the research for some will inspire ideas, while for others, it might actually limit the imagination. But in any case, research should always be a fun part of the whole creative process. It definitely shouldn't be something that you are afraid of doing. And although we could talk a lot about how to gather user feedback in this video, we'll actually, we will be mainly focusing on finding inspiration or examples for your project and besides collecting them, how you should organize it in a way that you can also display it to your client. So one of the best platforms to look for examples for a particular type of project. What is currently trending in the creative industry is Behance, which is the largest creative community online and it is part of Adobe's Creative Cloud here, by simply go into the Search tab and choosing projects. You immediately get to filter all the results by the creative fields. And besides the larger and more popular ones like graphic design, you will be able to find more niche areas as well here in this list on the right, like infographic or interaction design. But for the sake of this demonstration, I'm just going to choose Graphic Design. And within this, we could further filter the results based on the tools that were used for the design, the color palette, and even the geographic location of where that project was created. Of course, if there are a couple of words that defines your project really well, you can use those words as keywords while searching. So let's say you are designing something for an airline. Once we type that in here, we will get projects that relate to this topic. And we can find some amazing creative work here. And once you find something that you feel like is a useful reference and it's going to be important for your research. You can always decide to save it and be hands actually uses this term mood board that we will talk about a little bit more later on. So you can create a new board for your project that you're working on. I'm just going to call this airline Project Create. And now it is saved and we can move on finding other examples. And probably the best way of finding something that is similar to what we just saved is simply clicking on the more like this option here on the top left. The good thing about this feature is that it might not focus on airline projects, but it will look more for visually similar projects. You should use this when you like the aesthetic of a particular project and you wish to see more similar designs to that. Another good thing about creating mood boards on Behance is that you can even have multiple owners. You can invite other creators or researchers and they can incorporate their findings to the same mood board. And similarly to before when we had a single project selected and they wanted to find similar projects to that. Once you have a mood board filled with projects that you'd like. Because we'll be able to suggest even better examples. Because it is going to take into account everything that you have already on the mood board, not just a single project. So by clicking on See More ideas, we get much better and more interesting suggestions. And like before, if you find something that we like, we can say with a straight into the mood board. 9. More useful platforms for research: Similarly to Behance, another great source of inspiration and a platform to conduct your research is dribbble with three Bs. Again, it's another creative community which can also serve as a creative portfolio once you start uploading your own work. But in terms of doing your research, you should always jump to the inspiration tab where once again, you can find different categories. And once you pick the one that is closest to what you are interested in, you will be able to further refine again your findings by clicking on filters here on the top right. And similarly to Behance, you can define tags. You can choose colors, select the timeframe, the creative tools use, and even whether these projects include some downloadable files like Illustrator files, Photoshop files and so on, so forth. On Dribble, you can also start collecting examples simply by creating collections. So by clicking on this icon here, I can save it into an existing collection or create a new one. And here the projects are actually called shots. And the main difference between dribble and Behance is that while B hence usually is a detailed overview of a project, dribble usually shows only one or a couple of images from that project. It is concentrating on details more than the general context of the projects. And it is completely up to you, whichever you prefer. Some creatives preferred to concentrate on details and they tried to get inspiration from those. While others also try to understand the workflow behind particular projects and see how that can help with the research for the project that they're working on. You don't have to choose one of these platforms over the other. Of course, you can use them both, and there are plenty of others you can find similar to these. And there is actually a really cool extension called Panda for Google Chrome, where you can list all the different inspiration sites in one place. And you can see a feed within which you can scroll through very quickly and easily. So as you can see, I have dribble here, I have b hands, but there's also these other signs that I also like to reference whenever I'm doing my research and whenever I keep scrolling down, is going to keep loading new examples. This is a free extension and I highly recommend it. And you can actually set it up that every new tab you open in the browser will immediately present you with all of these inspiring projects. And of course, you can customize the type of sites you wish to see, but even the layout or the format in which you would like to display the different feeds from the sides. Pinterest can also be another great resource for inspiration. And again, it gives you lots of ways of organizing it. So for instance, this board that I created for my monsters and villains research, for an illustration project, I actually created subcategories or smaller boards within the original board, grouping the references that I've found into these categories, creatures, aliens, dragons on that, and villains. If we jump into one of these, we can see what's inside here and we can even move these around if we wanted to. But we can very quickly jump back up one level and go back to seeing all the other boards or the other pins that we had uncategorized. Now when it comes to working with others while doing the research, it's always good to use a tool that allows you the real-time collaboration, even if people are not in the same location. So everyone is working remotely. And there are many popular tools specifically designed for researching, like Miro and Miller node, which is our preferred tool to use at the assignment designer. This is something that I've been using for years and I'm going to show in a separate video how it can be used both for researching and in general, organising inspiration, and even managing creative projects. So jumping into melanoma, I would like to show just a couple of interesting examples of moodboards. And this is something that you can put together yourself once you have your research. So once you found some interesting examples that you think will work really well for a particular brief. And instead of relying the mood board on Behance or a collection of Dribble, or a board on Pinterest, putting together your own moodboard directly in melanoma might give you even more flexibility and freedom. Because here you can even overlap images and you can include color swatches and you can create something that's much more flexible and easier to amend. And don't forget that melanoma allows again to have collaborators working simultaneously live on the same board. But the mood board can be actually much more than something that the designers are referring back to. It can also be used to present certain directions to the clients. Like these two moodboards I put together many years ago for a project. And they are actually answering the same brief, but showing two very distinct visual direction. You can see that I actually carefully designed these moodboards, putting things together, organizing them into specific columns. In this case, we have inspiration of facts, details, icons and logos, making it easier to present it to the client. And once the direction is selected to be able to use this board to refer back to every little detail very quickly and easily in case you are planning to create your custom mood boards like this. I believe that the best tool for this is Photoshop, but for mood boards with a slightly less complex layout, you can also use InDesign. And here is a great example for a mood board for a bakery branding project put together by one of our members, students, noon CIA, where we can see that all the inspiration is nicely organized again, starting with the preferred color palette than pattern and a couple of icons, followed by packaging example and some product shots. Another common thing that you can include on your moodboard are the preferred type faces that you think is going to work for that brief. And also maybe a couple of keywords or attributes that define really well the direction or the aesthetic, or the theme that you're after. 10. The ideation stage: The ideation stage is undoubtedly the most creative part of the design process, and it is the one. Personally, I enjoy the most. We will be covering a lot of different techniques in this video that you can use during this stage to explore new ideas, come up with different directions that you can then further develop later on in the design process. And we will also take a look at a couple of amazing design projects, just so you can see how crucial it is to get that initial idea recorded, either in a sketch, thumbnail, a mind-map, or a wireframe. And we will also obviously discuss all of these different terms and what they mean. One of the most common techniques during the ideation stage that you should be using is sketching. And don't worry if you're not good at drawing. These catches, don't have to be too detailed. They can actually be really rough or highly detailed, depending whatever works best for the project and whatever you are capable of doing. And here you can see an example of the sketches that were drawn by gene one over r prime members student. She started with this exploration for the farmers market logo design project. And you can see how she circled the ideas that she preferred the most and that she decided to develop further, no matter what type of creative project you're working on, you should always come up with as many ideas as you can in this initial stage when you're not yet concentrating on the details here, you don't have to be a perfectionist and only record the good ideas. Just put down anything on the paper that comes to your mind and filter out the best ones at the end once you have plenty to choose from. If sketching doesn't help you to come up with ideas, and it's just generally doesn't work for you. Then you can also use a mind-map where instead of drawings you are recording words that comes to your mind when you are reading the brief or looking at your research, you should always first start in the middle and write down the central theme or the main keywords for the project. And this could even be the name of the product or service that you are preparing the design for or the issue or question that you are planning to answer video work, it is very important to choose this central statement carefully because it's something that you will always be referring back to. And once you have this starting point the in place, we'll start adding additional words in all direction, connecting them with lines. And then from these ideas, other ideas will stamp. And then you just keep going on radiating from the center of the mind-map and keep branching out, adding new words and really mapping the knowledge that you have of the project that you will be working on. You can also combine sketching and mind-mapping, like in this example, where again, we can see some rough sketches illustrating those words that are recorded within the mind map. And instead of a single keyword here we actually have a question in the center, what do people carry? And then from the central point, we can see that there are clearly defined smaller hubs or subgroups like this one at the beach. So all of these words radiate from that theme. While here on the right, for instance, we have hiking and all the things that people normally carry with them when they are going on a hiking trip. If you prefer to do mind-mapping in a digital format instead of writing things down. There are many tools online, like mind Meister, for which the link is on the board so you can find it from here. What's good about using a tool like this is that you will easily be able to move things around. But obviously on the paper you are slightly more restricted and you might need to erase things out if you want to make changes. Since we are talking about erasing, That's actually something that you should never do in this ideation stage. So when you're coming up with ideas, you should never ignore any of them. So you shouldn't erase or delete any ideas. You can maybe cross them out. But remember, it's always easier to just highlight or circle the good ideas. And that way you will know that all the other ones are not as strong. Because believe me, it happened with me many times that I ignored an idea in the beginning, but later on in the process, I realized that it is actually a really good one and it also resonates with the client. So it was extremely useful that I kept all my initial sketches. I didn't ignore, erase or delete them, and I could easily come back to them and change the whole direction of the project. Now here's another nice combination again from Gene, our students, where we can see on the right side some sketches and on the left side a mindmap. But in this case it's a slightly different format. So instead of having a central word and the rest radiating out from that central point, here we have two columns, the two main categories for this project. So since this one is another logo design for a calf called coffee cat, here on the left side we have the main term defined as coffee, and the other column is cat. And all the words listed in each of these columns are the things that our student Jane thought of, like furry cod league, curious for cat and beans, cup, spoon, coffee stain for the coffee. And the cool thing about having these two vertical list next to each other is that you will be able to connect two words together, even randomly. And sometimes you can come up with combinations that you never have thought of without having this mind-mapping layout in the first place. 11. Ideation methods: Another way or method for recording your initial ideas is to do thumbnail sketches. And compared to simpler, less complex designs like a logo, this is better when it comes to designing a full layout, for instance, for a magazine or a book cover, movie poster or brochure, the best way to do these thumbnails is to start off always with a frame which you fill in with your sketch. And by having these frames the same size, you are going to be able to see in relation to each other the concepts or ideas that you are coming up with. So it will make it much easier to compare them to each other. And although it might feel like a bit of a waste of time since you can already start doing this digitally, maybe using InDesign or Illustrator or Photoshop. Believe me, it is actually going to save you a lot of time because once you end up using any of these tools, you will not be able to focus on the actual ideas themselves because at the same time you are also going to apply certain techniques and workflows that you learned in a particular tool. Days why these thumbnails should still be done as a rough sketches, either with pencil and paper or of course, you can also do them digitally, maybe using an iPad and use a tool like Procreate. But no matter what format you choose, traditional or digital for the sketching stage, remember not to concentrate on details. So instead of creating amazing drawings, It's more about the amount of ideas that you can come up with or the amount of different ideas. So in general, it's true about the design process that quality is more important than quantity in this stage, actually the opposite is true. Another term you may have heard is the storyboard, which might look quite similar to the previous example of the thumbnails. But why have thumbnails we mainly use for static compositions. Once again, like a magazine layout, storyboards are more appropriate for animation, motion graphics, and video projects. Here's a great example of a storyboard within Mill anode, where besides the sketches for each of the frames or scenes within this animation project was also useful is that we can see them in the order in which they would appear within the animation with the simple explanation for what each scene is about. And again, the advantage of putting together a storyboard and then digital format like this is that it is very easy to move the scenes around and maybe change the order of them if you decide to do so. Here's another example from one of our other pro members students who drew this initial sketch for a frame or seen from an animation project that he was working on. And we can see how it was fully rendered later on using Illustrator and after effect. Here's another beautiful example of highly detailed thumbnail sketches by our student gene for a book cover design project. Now even though these sketches are much more detailed than the other ones that we've seen earlier is still a good idea to keep things monochrome and not introducing additional colors. Because once you define a color palette, it can actually overwhelm the original idea. And sometimes if, especially if you are showing these sketches to the client, they might have a preference and choose not based on the actual ideas, but simply based on their preference of the color palette. Another variation of thumbnail sketches is what we call a wireframe, which is usually used in web design and user experience design projects. And these are great to establish the basic structure of a site or app before the visual design content and additional details are added in a wireframe format, we would normally indicate images with a rectangle, with a cross over. Then we would have lines of copy as just simple lines horizontally and every other elements like radio, buttons and icons, can also all be simplified. Just like I said about sketching, wireframing is also something that you can do on paper, or you can also do it digitally. And I go into much more detail on this within the web and digital design topic. 12. How initial ideas turn into designs: Another ideation term that you may have heard of is a whiteboarding, which of course, simply just means that you are using a white board. And this is very commonly used in agencies during a brainstorming session where you are together with other creatives and you are trying to record ideas in collaboration with each other. And similarly to sketching, what makes a brainstorming or whiteboarding session successful is that first of all, you should focus on quantity and that there are no bad ideas. So you should be withholding criticism at this stage, you should actually welcome and celebrate unusual or unexpected ideas by having lots of ideas laid out next to each other on the whiteboard. The other additional advantages that it will be easier to start connecting some ideas and combining them together. I've worked in agencies where we had smaller wide boards like this one on the picture. But I've also been to workspaces where the whole wall was a big whiteboard and you could literally draw anywhere. There is something really cool and inspirational about surrounding yourself with ideas and having everyone joining in collaborating, not being afraid of making mistakes. Remember what we said about the creative process or the downfall of creativity is when you are afraid of making mistakes. All of these ways of coming up with ideas are encouraging you not to be afraid of writing down or drawing anything that comes to your mind. That is the most important thing to remember about ideation. So record any ideas that comes to your mind without filtering and without deleting or ignoring anything that you've already recorded. And just to show you a few inspiring examples of how the initial ideas recorded as sketches we're attending to final fully-fledged designs. Here is first of all, a book cover design. So this is the initial sketch and this is the final design. So going back to the sketch and then jumping to the design, we can see that most of the elements were already there in the original sketch. Not much has changed. And even though the artist most likely already have a rough idea of the color palette that was not necessary to be recorded in this initial sketch. You can see the same approach with another beautiful sketch created by one of our other pro members student's name for a packaging design project, which later was turned into a full vector artwork and also displayed with a mock-up or visual showing the final design in context. Last but not least, here are the crucial stages of an animation project. Again, starting with a simple rough sketch, followed by a more refined version of the sketch. So once again, if I switch back and forth, you can see that the general idea was already recorded in the initial stage, and it was just further refined in this second sketch. And the colors were only introduced in this next stage. So once the refined sketch was approved, the colors and additional details could be added. Once again, switching back and forth, we can see not much has changed. It's mainly those colors and some pattern details that were added. And then in this case, because it wasn't a traditional animation project, but one lab, they combine 2D and 3D elements together. They actually turned the illustration we've seen earlier into a 3D model, first rendered without any colors and patterns. Then in the next stage, those details were added. And then finally came the animation, which in this case was actually a 2D animation using After Effects. But the most important thing to remember is that in order to be able to achieve something really cool and amazing like this, they started off with a simple rough sketch. And when you think about it, not much has changed. So if you have a great idea to begin with and you can record it as a sketch. It is guaranteed that in the end you are going to get a great result. But on the other hand, if your initial sketch, your idea is week, is almost like having no foundation for a building. So no matter how much time you are going to spend refining it and adding details, is just not going to work in the end. So never underestimate the importance of the ideation stage. 13. Presentation: By the end of the ideation stage, you should have those sketches or ideas that you record it and nail down as the ones that works best for answering debrief, you are ready to get started and turning those ideas into fully-fledged designs. Now, depending on the type of project, in some cases, you might actually want to present the sketches that you select it to the client. Of course, if necessary, you should always tidy them up and refine them, making sure that the client can understand and what these initial ideas are about. But why this early presentation format can work with certain clients. But the more common practice is to only present to the client wants you actually have the fully refined and detailed designs. Now, no matter whichever version you prefer, you should always remember not to over around the client with lots of different options. And even if you turn five or ten of these initial ideas into fully-fledged Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign compositions, you should always try to narrow down the directions that you are going to present, 23. And that is really a magical number for presentations. Just think about it. If you are showing one direction that is extremely restrictive and it's not going to give the clients and the options. So they will just have to go with whatever you are showing them. It's almost as if you are not even interested in their feedback by giving them two options that are distinct and different from each other. In most cases, they will find it hard to choose because it's almost like a yes or no question where there is more pressure in deciding what's the right answer compared to when you have three choices to choose from, most clients will feel more at ease in choosing the direction that they prefer the most. Now, on the other hand, as I said earlier, anything more than three directions can become overwhelming. And it can make the selection process again much longer and more tedious. Once again, sometimes the client won't even be able to decide which direction they like. The worst-case scenario is that because of this uncertainty, they might even call off the whole project. So remember presenting three directions or concepts is probably the one that works best in most cases. And here's an example from one of our pro members students, gene, presenting the three variations for the farmers market logo design project, showing the designs on their own on the left, and then using mockups in contexts on the right. These mockups are extremely useful when presenting to clients because they help them visualize your designs in contexts that they are familiar with. You can also combine multiple items into a single slide when presenting to a client. Like in this case, one of our other students, Nia, is showing this coffee cat logo as a branding on various items. Now once you have these amazing visuals and in general, the presentation deck ready to show to the client, It's very important to go back and double-check the brief, making sure that you haven't missed anything important. Clients love to see all the tasks that will record it in the brief addressed in your presentation. So that's something definitely to keep in mind. And another good practice in case you are presenting live, whether in-person or online, is to do a practice run through your presentation and time yourself. You definitely don't want your presentation to be too long, so you should be able to get to the point fairly quickly. However, instead of jumping straight to the actual designs that you created, It's actually good to have a bit of an intro section where you remind the client the original objective of the project. And maybe by revealing or showing some aspects of the creative workflow that you went through, you can build a bit of anticipation before revealing the final designs that you came up with. When it comes to the three directions that you decided to present to them. Out of these three, most likely there will be one that is your personal favorite and that you are hoping the client is going to choose. In my experience. And also this is something I heard from many other creatives. The favorite idea that you have should always be displayed at the end. So show the other two directions first and keep your favorite for the last. Because most clients and people in general tend to remember what they saw last. And that's the one that's going to leave a lasting impression. So there is a high chance that, that is the direction that they will go with. Another good practice to differentiate the three directions that you're presenting is that one of them should be a safe option that really follows the brief to the dot. But I also have a concept that is really pushing the limitations set in the brief and goes a little bit more wild, something that might surprise your client. And last but not least, a couple of additional tips that you should keep in mind during your presentations to the client. One is that you should always take notes throughout the whole conversation. This really shows that you care about their feedback. And even if you're not planning to implement everything, your client will appreciate seeing your dedication. But while recording or taking notes of everything they say, it doesn't mean that you have to also agree with everything. So you shouldn't be afraid to actually defend your designs or decisions whenever you feel like the client is not right. Remember, they hired you for a reason and you are the creative professional. So in certain cases, by explaining the creative thinking behind a certain concept, you might be able to help your client to understand your reasoning. And they might be able to see you're designing a different light at the end of your presentation, you should always have time to agree on the next steps and what the client is expecting to receive from you next time. And it is also good practice to send a full presentation deck to all the participants in that presentation meeting together with some high level nodes that you recorded. So to summarize, for a successful presentation, you will need two things. First of all, great designs and directions that you are proud to present to the client, but almost as important, you will need also a good format. The way that you communicate how you came up with those designs. Even though you are a graphic designer, when you are presenting your work in a way, you have to become a salesperson because you are selling some ideas or concepts to your client. And this is why it is so important to learn graphic design theory and be aware of all of these different terms and techniques that we are covering in this course. Because this is going to give you confidence in what you're doing and help you to not only work, but also sound like a real creative professional while you are presenting your work. 14. Feedback: Unless at the end of your presentation, the client said that they love what you've done and they don't need any changes. Which to be honest and very rarely happens. You will have to go back to the drawing board, look at the feedback that they provided and tried to implement everything by amending and refining your initial concepts. This is the stage that we normally refer to as the iteration. And it can have many stages in some projects, it might only be one or two stages. Where do you keep going back and forth presenting the changes to the client. But I remember when I was working in a creative agency in some cases, we ended up having 40 to 50 stages for some more complex projects or just simply difficult clients. Now, unless you are charging your client by the hour or the amount of hours that you put into a project. This is also another critical thing that you have to define in the contract at the very beginning, whether you are willing to make unlimited changes for your client, for an agreed budget, or whether this is something for which you are charging an extra fee, you should never allow your clients to take advantage of your generosity. So I wouldn't recommend to ever agree to unlimited changes for no additional fee. Normally, what I do with my clients is that I allow two to three rounds of changes which is covered by my initial fee, but any rounds of changes after that, I will start charging my client. Additionally, by limited the free or included rounds of feedback, your client will also pay more attention to what they're saying and is less likely that you are going to end up in a nightmare situation where a project just never ends and you just keep running in circles, chasing that feedback loop endlessly trying to please the client. This is a great illustration by burnt toast. Ten shows really well that in some cases, clients might end up literally holding your hands, trying to take your place and completely ignore whatever you are telling them. And that is a very unhealthy designer client's situation which you always want to avoid. Once again, the more confident you are in your work and understanding graphic design theory, the easier it is to be able to set boundaries. And probably one of the most important thing that you should never do is to make any changes are immense in front of your client. So sometimes while presenting you might feel the urge that wherever they are asking is actually a very simple thing. They might just want to move one the image a little bit to the left or the right or size something up and down. But even if you can do what they're asking in a few seconds, you should never do it in front of them because that is exactly how this hand-holding starts. And once you are in it, it will be very hard to get out of. Now since for most creative projects, you will be going through this iteration process and you will have several rounds. And in each round you will get feedback. It's important to document all of these and record them according to the stages that you are going through. And it is a good practice to reread every feedback that you got so far, including the previous stages as well, before any meeting that you have with your client. This will help you to be able to refer to not only to the most recent feedback that they gave you, but also to things that they said earlier in the process. Now some clients will be really good at giving you constructive criticism. Something that will really help you to make changes and refine and improve your work. But unfortunately, in many cases, your client won't be able to articulate really well what they want. And they might just say that they just don't like what you've done. This type of negative feedback can be really hard to digest and accept, and it can really ruin real motivation for working on the project. But as long as your client, at least like one of the directions that you presented to them, you shouldn't be too upset and you shouldn't feel bad letting go maybe your favorite direction because no one knows better their product than your client. So even if they can't explain why they don't like something, they most likely will have a good feeling about what is going to work for their brand. The worst case is when they say that they don't like anything that you present it to them and it's completely wrong and it's nothing what they imagined. Which means that as long as you want to stick to continuing working on the project, that you will have to start from scratch. And potentially you might even go back and redo the research. Because as long as you use that for the design process, it most likely wasn't on point and it did not align with what the client imagined Having said that, don't forget what I mentioned in the previous video. In some cases, you actually will have to defend your designs and your decisions. And if you can articulate and communicate well how you came to those decisions, you might actually be able to convert a very negative feedback to something more constructive and other horrible situation you also want to avoid at any cost is what is usually referred to as designed by committee. In most cases, they simply just comes down to the fact that there are just too many people being involved in giving you feedback, both the management leadership and decision-making is compromised. It is hard already as it is to please one person who can be the decision-maker in a project. But when you have several people with different ideas, it can be really and nightmare situation. There is a great sketch called the process on this board that you can watch where you can see that the original design for a stop sign, turning into this, taking on all the various feedback that the poor creative is getting from all the various departments of the client. Here's another actual real logo design that you can find online, which is also a perfect example of what can be the result Of designed by committee, where it's clear that everyone who took part in the process wanted to showcase something that felt important for them. And the designer wasn't confident enough to defend the design, which in result ended up being a Frankenstein of all kinds of different things on this board. You can also find some hilarious examples of what design by committee could look like, where even an amazing classical piece of graphic design can be torn apart by having too many people involved in the process. 15. Review: With recent updates and new features in Creative Cloud applications like Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, it is becoming easier and easier to gather feedback from clients and other stakeholders. And in this video, I'm going to show you a couple of things to keep in mind in case you are planning to use these features. So first and foremost, the client or the stakeholders involved in the review process won't actually have to have a paid Creative Cloud license in order to see your designs that you're sending to them and to leave comments on them. So here's an example of an illustrator cloud that document that I shared for review. And this is actually what the client or stakeholder would get. A link that they can open in their browser where they can see the artwork and they can leave their comments here on the right side. Now you can see that I added some comments and I even use this little pin tool with which I'm specifying where I want those changes to be made. And the amazing thing is that you can actually see these comments coming in live within Adobe Illustrator, inside the comments tab. So even while you are working on your illustrations or designs, you will be able to respond to the things that the stakeholders are asking. Now don't forget what I said in the previous video that you don't want to end up being in that handheld situation where they can see the changes so quickly that they just keep on endlessly asking you to make a man's life before when we talked about design by committee, here, the same thing applies that it is better to have less people involved in the review if possible, and ideally invite only those who can actually provide constructive criticism and who you can work really well together with. The other cool feature that was introduced in Creative Cloud is the version history with which I can make my changes and save it as a new version. I already went ahead and answered all of these changes with a new version, which I can easily load in from the version history tab. So I can just say revert to this version. So instead of having separate file safe for each stage, I can now keep everything within the same Illustrator Cloud document. And I can even go ahead and mark all of these comments being resolved. And by coming back to the browser window, we can see that the changes was so are reflected here. So it seems like there are no new comments at the moment, but I'm just going to add one right now using the pin tool and click here, I'm typing increase roundness of frame and reduce thickness. I'm just going to submit this and it shows up immediately as a new command that hasn't been resolved yet. And by coming back to Illustrator after a few seconds, the comment already showed up. So now we can just select this rectangle. And with one of the corner widgets, we can quickly increase the roundness. And then with the stroke attribute, we can reduce the thickness. Now that I've done my changes, again, just take off this request as a command that is now resolved. And if I feel like this is an important milestone or stage within the design process, I can decide to save it as a new version, which I can do by coming into the most recent save and clicking on the bookmark. I can give it a name. I'm just going to call this new frame. And when I come to the mark versions, now, I'm going to have three of them. The original, the one with the frame, one with the new frame. So once again, original. The one with the frame and then the one with the new frame that we just saved. So we can see quickly the difference there. And the great thing is that this is also reflected in the browser view. So the stakeholders can also go to the Timeline tab here on the right where they will be able to see the marked versions. So there is the new frame, but they can also quickly jump back to the previous state or even the original one. So I can very quickly toggle through all of these and compare them to each other. Now for Photoshop Cloud documents, you have almost exactly the same set of features workflow available to go through the review process. While for documents shaft from within InDesign, you will have a couple of additional features that can be accessed from the browser. So besides placing a pen or just writing a comment in general, here, we can also highlight text, strike through text, replaced x, or even draw a shape. But the drawing shape option is actually something that's available also for Illustrator and Photoshop. So with this, we can easily make some marks, set the color that we want to use, and then also at some command for it here I'm just going to say turn title to all caps and then submit this command. And the good thing is that whenever I hover over this command, it also highlights where I can find this within the design or vice versa. If I come here and click on it, it highlights the comment on the right side. Similarly to this, if we want to change something in the copy, we can first just highlight the text. Then choose the tool that we want to use. Replace text in this case, and then just put the word that we wish to use instead, instead of travel, Let's say we want to use move. Once I submit that, it's going to show up here in the browser. But more importantly, the designer who has this file open in InDesign, we'll be able to see all of these feedback coming in live. And whenever they select one of them, it will show up straight here within the design, these creative cloud features are extremely useful to be able to get responses from your clients on an ongoing basis instead of relying and waiting for occasional meetings. 16. Delivery: The final stage of the design process is the delivery. When you are handing over print and verb, read the files to the client and ideally doing this before the deadline that you agreed to a region. Now compared to the fund research, ideation and design stage is the delivery stage involves a lot less creativity and it's more about meticulously go through every file and double-check that everything is correct before the files are handed over. This stage is also referred to sometimes as art working, which simply means tidying up and sometimes reworking the creative designs. And in creative agencies and artwork error is usually also a designated role. They work hand-in-hand together with designers and creative directors and usually support them so they can concentrate on the creative decisions. And art worker is a special breed of a graphic designer who is really good at spotting mistakes and who doesn't mind doing repetitive tasks? They don't necessarily have to be good at coming up with unique and creative ideas, but they have to have very strong technical skills in using the creative applications and also solid understanding of how to prepare files for both web and print. Now in case you are a freelance designer and you are a one man band, that means that you will have to be both a graphic designer and also an art worker. So throughout the creative process, you will keep changing hats. So we already mentioned previously that when you're presenting your work to the client, you have to become almost like a salesperson. While at the end in the delivery stage, you have to become an art worker. One way that you can make your life easier is to already work in a very organized way. And that applies both to the file structure or file management of your design projects and also the Layers, Swatches and styles saved into your working files. So here's a good example from 99 designs how you can be consistent in structuring your files and folders for every project where you will have a separate project for each client. Within that, you will have sub folders for each project. And within a project folder, you will also organize everything into subgroups like client, input, sense, design, and production. So since we are talking about delivery than the preparation of all the print and web ready files. That's actually something that would fall into the production further while the original working files. So Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign files and packages will go inside the design folder. And remember, we've talked about this earlier that these project files or working files is something that you don't normally provide to the client, but was definitely a good practice is to number the versions of each of the project files according to the rounds of feedback that you're getting from the client. So you are starting off with brochure 01, for instance. Then the client gives you feedback. You would save a new version, a duplicate working file, which you call brochure 02 and so on and so forth. You keep creating these new versions until you reach the point where there is no further changes necessary. And that final project file can be converted into a print ready PDF or whatever file format is necessary for production or required by the client. Now you might recall in the previous video that when it comes to cloud the documents, you don't actually have to save duplicates or separate versions to be able to have a version history that you can fall back on. But in most cases, especially in a creative agency environment, you still wouldn't rely on that single file in the Cloud. It's always safer to have these duplicates for each of the stages of the design process, it definitely takes up more space on the hard drive, but it just gives you more security besides being consistent with the way that you are organizing your files and folders for each project. It is also important to stick to the same naming convention, which will help you to find the relevant files whenever you have to search for something. For instance, you can define a short code for every project and also for every client. And these codes can be included in all the filenames that you are producing. These simple things can save you so much time in the long run. But it can also be extremely useful if someone else has to take over a project from you. In case you are working in a team or a creative agency. But in case you ever have to hand over your working file to another creative. It is also to keep everything inside the files as tidy as possible, and that includes layers. So for instance, you should always delete empty layers or layers that you are not using anymore and create layer groups and subgroups to keep things better organized. Naming your layers and layer groups is also extremely useful, whether just to make it easy for another creative to understand what you've done. But even for yourself in case you have to revisit the file couple of months later, the correct naming will save you a lot of time. So just like avoiding meaningless or confusing file names like these, you also want to do the same for your layers and any presets that you create that will also be stored in your project files. And that can include Character, paragraph styles, swatches, and any other presets that you normally would use. 17. Organising and backing up your work: Now when you're thinking about finalizing a project and making sure that a file is ready to be handed over to the client. Another very important part of this delivery process is to make sure that there are no spelling mistakes. And for this, it is recommended to run a spell check on all of your files, which is a feature that's available in pretty much all of the Adobe applications. But after that, if possible, you should also have a proofreader going through the final version of the file. The person who is going to do the proofreading is not only going to look for spelling mistakes, but also check the general accuracy and grammar of the copy, which are equally important. There is another term, pre-flight, that is used when it comes to the preparation of files for print. And it's actually a feature that is in InDesign. It's a separate panel where you can run an automated check on the health of an InDesign file. This will be able to automatically warn you whenever there is a missing image or missing font, or depending on the profile, profile you are using. It can also warn you if the resolution of an image is too low for the specifications that you chose. Now, even if you keep your files organized and you are not planning to provide the project files to your client. It is still advised to save a package at the end of the process. And this mainly applies to InDesign projects where almost every time a package is going to be required in order to make sure that you are not going to end up having missing links or missing fonts in case you have to revisit the project couple of months later. But packaging of project files also applies to Photoshop and Illustrator in case you are using linked assets. That can be a Linked Smart Object in Photoshop or simply unlinked graphic in Illustrator. So to save a package, it's the same in all of these applications. You just simply have to go to the File menu and then choose package. And before going any further here, you can already double-check whether there's any warnings or errors. So we can see that there are no missing images or so, no missing fonts. So everything seems to be fine. And if we click on Package, we will be able to specify where we want to save this on our computer. And also maybe additionally choose some options like including different file formats and even a PDF in the package folder. Once we create the package, it's going to export everything in that selected folder which will have the actual project file, in this case an IND d Phi format. Next to it there is the PDF that was generated. But more importantly, we have all the images saved into a links folder. So even if you're not planning to archive and backup everything that you use for the project. The package should definitely be something that you will see for later. In case the client comes back to you and requires some changes in the future. And since we are talking about backing up your files, it is something that you should be doing throughout the whole process and don't wait until the very end. So don't just do it during the delivery stage because accidents can happen anytime. And it is a graphic designers nightmare when a computer crashes and you lose some of your work. It happened to me a couple of times that a few hours of my work being lost and I had to recreate it. And even though I knew what I've done before, it still took me almost the same amount of time, if not more, because I was tired than upset because of losing my work. So it is highly recommended to use an automated backup solution, whether it is offline, like the time machine on an Apple computer, or it's an online cloud storage solution like live drive. The constantly checks for any changes in selected folders or hard drives and makes sure that those changes are continuously backed up for you. The ideal setup for backing up your work is usually refer to the three-to-one strategy, which means that you are having at least three copies of everything, two of which are locally stored but on different devices. And at least one copy of side, usually in a Cloud Storage. Minimum three copies to locally stored in a Cloud Storage or somewhere off site. And I guess you can imagine why it's important to have at least one of these copies stored off site. That's because if all the copies are stored in the same room, let's say your studio. And God forbid if there is fire or flooding or something really bad happens, you might end up losing everything and you won't have any backups available. That is definitely not an ideal situation. So it's worth investing into backup solutions. And remember to keep backing up everything while you are working and don't leave it till the final stage or delivery of the project. 18. Automation and batch processes: Now there's one last thing worth mentioning, and that is sometimes in this delivery stage, you might be able to automate some tasks and batch process some of the files that you produced. This could include quickly renaming a lot of files at the same time, but also changing their file format. So for instance, saving PSD files as JPEG, PNGs, or even PDFs, and even automatically resize them during this batch process. And one of the best tools for batch processing creative files is Adobe Bridge, which is also part of the Creative Cloud, especially with the addition of the workflow feature in the 2020s version. So in this panel here on the left, you will be able to create a workflow for which you will be able to specify the tasks that you would like all the files to be going through. So it could, for instance, start with a resize option, which can be specified here on the right side. So we can scale to a certain percentage, but also to a specific size. But then we can add additional steps in the task diagram panel. So for instance, we can say that we also want to change the format of these images. And here on the right again, we can define the output format. It can be JPEG, PNG, TIF, or digital negative, which is the standard camera raw format by Adobe. And then we can also add additional changes to metadata or even the batch rename option with video. Again, we can specify the naming convention that we would like to apply to these files. Once you specify all the tasks for your workflow, you just have to name it and save it. And then all you need to do is to select the images are files that you wish to use and then simply drag and drop them on the workflow that you wish to start. If you wish to see the progress of your workflow, you can always click on View Progress here on the bottom left. But the best thing is that it happens in the background. So you can continue doing other things in the application without having to wait for the batch processing. So to summarize, the delivery stage is all about triple checking everything, making sure things are organized and tidy and neat. And in general, if you want to spend more time designing and worry less about it. This final refinement stage, my best advice is that you should already start working from the very beginning in an organized and structured way. So that is not going to turn into a daunting and exhausting task that you have to do at the end of each of your projects. 19. Conclusion: Congratulations on completing this course of the graphic design theory series. I hope you found it useful and inspiring. Don't forget to go through the glossary of terms PDF, review everything we covered, and if you feel ready, take the quiz to test your knowledge. Come back anytime to the references on the millenial boards we used in this course to help you remember the things we talked about or define inspiration for your next design project, please let us know if you felt there was anything missing from this course or if you have any suggestions on how we can improve it, email us at info at the assignment designer.com, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. We really appreciate your input and help. Now, it's time for you to pick your next topic and dive into another graphic design theory course. Remember, there is no right or wrong order to complete this series. All the rules we cover are equally important and everything is related. But what is most important is getting a good understanding of these rules and applying them in your projects. I'm sure you will use what you've learned to create something amazing. And I cannot wait to see it.