Matt Davies has kindly offered up his thoughts on design processes. Let’s cut straight to the juicy bits:

Matt, what’s the very first thing you do when approaching a new design?

I think of priorities. Design ultimately is about purpose and if your design doesn’t meet its purpose then ultimately the outcome will not be successful. If you are designing a website you have things like, functionality, brand strength and key messages, which all effect the sites target audience, layout and structure. When you have clear priorities you can then set about ordering these things accordingly. It really helps the whole process and this principle of priorities carries throughout print and web design.

Most of the time clients dictate the priorities, eg. This advert needs to appeal to this type of person, however sometimes, especially I find in web design, clients need to be educated into how and why things are placed in a certain way – the way I do that is by getting the client to make decisions on priorities.

What do think the most important aspect of a brief is to the designer?

I think that (going hand in hand with priorities), the target audience is so important for a designer to understand. You could have a really creative design which utilises all the latest styles and, from a design perspective is brilliant – but it doesn’t appeal to the target audience – so its basically useless.

This target audience point Andy, really helps with priorities. I often find that the best people to talk to about target audiences are clients themselves. I do not try and second guess a client about their target audience because ultimately they are dealing with them on a day to day basis or they know the people they would like to be dealing with.

When you have grasped a clients needs, what next?

Well once I understand what a client wants I suppose its all about the best way to accomplish their aspirations. Things like time, money and capability are things that come in at this stage. Then once these sort of things have been nailed down its all about execution. Communication and process are two things which I try to adhere to. I love process but some designers prefer a more open approach. We are all different and ultimately the way you give the client what they want will be different from individual to individual or from team to team.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Wow. Now that’s a question! If I said everywhere would that do?!!!

Ok, stop frowning! More detail. Ok. Well I suppose many web communities and showcases give me inspiration, depending on the type of project there are different places I go. For example css galleries for web or advertising showcases for advertising.

Also books are very important. You can get so much from design books its unbelievable. Likewise with magazines like “Creative review” or “Computer Arts”.

Other than that its all about taking in what’s around you. Conversations I have, or overhear often influence tag lines. Billboards and magazines, shop windows, fashion, architecture (did I say everything?!) all effect a switched on designer.

Where do you start with the design? A sketchpad? Photoshop?

Again it depends on the job and the client. Sometimes ideas might start on a napkin or scrap of paper. Others might be more computer based. Its wherever inspiration grabs me!

I tend to start in Adobe illustrator for a lot of my designs because of the flexibility it brings. I then often come out of that and re-create elements by hand or with Adobe Photoshop.

What stages do you go through to translate a design into a web page/site?

Ok there are two schools of thought on this. On is that there is a step by step approach – this would be something like:

1. Agree aims / Priories / Target audience
2. Research
3. Produce flat visuals
4. Client gives content
5. Code up in css and html (or serverside code depending on what is required)
6. Launch

The problem with this is that it is occasionally inflexible. If the client for example give you content which doesn’t match the design layout then you could end up with a weird looking site with gaps all over it. So the approach I take is very much like the steps above but is being constantly evaluated. So if I get to step 4 I may have to go back up to step 3 again if things are not what they should be. This way, although more difficult to manage, the outcome of a site is much better.

If I have a good relationship with a client then I normally drum my process into them and they come into line in regards to the way I work but some clients find this difficult and so the re-evaluation process is how I get around it.

And once the site is done, what advice do you normally leave the client with?

There is a lot of SEO advice I leave behind. Eg, generate links in, keep an eye on your rankings etc.

There is also a load of other after launch stuff which clients can benefit from such as pay per click advertising, sponsorship, mailers, promotions etc. I normally leave these ideas in the clients head hoping that in the future they will contact me regarding them.

Search engine stuff of course is very important to come back to after a site has launched as a few small tweaks here and there can make all the difference.

~ ~ ~

Thanks for being your open, chatty self Matt. I’m sure readers appreciate it.

Readers, if you want to grill Matt on his process ideas then simply make a comment below. Matt will stick around to answer your queries.

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