Ok, so you want a brochure, ad, package, website, billboard or TV commercial…
Whatever and whenever you need something designed, you need a plan. First how to save money with your graphic designer. Organize yourself.
Let’s say you want to do a design brochure for your company. Think of it as a puzzle. You have to determine the size and the elements that will have to go into it. Your best place to start is the copy.
Copy
Layout the copy in an outline form:
- Headline
- Subhead
- Body copy
- Bullet points.
Mark it page one, two, three etc. Changing copy after the graphics are done will increase the cost of the job exponentially. Copy is a design element. One of the more important design elements.
“Copy is a design element.”
Don’t leave it up to the designer to type your copy. Have it prepared in a digital format and correct from the beginning.
If a paragraph of copy on a page has four hundred characters there are four hundred chances for errors. Designers don’t look at words as much as they do blocks of copy.
Make sure you have all the copy proof read before you give it to your designer. When he’s done make sure you proof it carefully, a million things can still go wrong.
Other Elements
You’ll need to sit down with your designer to discuss the assets you want. Assets would be things like your company logo, a specific illustration or photograph, and charts or graphs. Anything that needs to be prepared in advance so that it can be incorporated into your final puzzle.
A designer can only basically guess at this if they don’t know what’s going into it. If, for instance, you want to put a dozen dancing bears on the front cover of the brochure, the designer will have to either look for an existing image, which could take hours with no result, or budget a photo shoot with animals, trainers, sets, insurance etc.
Now you can see how the price of a brochure, for instance, could fluctuate. Giving your designer copy in advance and talking about what type of images you’ll be wanting to support that copy will leave a lot of guessing out of the equation and keep your budget to a minimum.
Do you have a brochure or marketing piece that you need designed? Come on by for a cup of coffee and lets discuss you, your organization, and your product or service.
