How I Work With Clients

I approach every new design project by thoroughly understanding the client’s needs, wants, goals, and vision. I’ve found that walking the client through the steps of developing that information to be indispensable.

For new clients, we start with a detailed worksheet that I created that walks us through the fundamentals of the project. It begins with defining the purpose and mission of the project, such as, “Why did you start this (business, book, nonprofit, etc.)?” and “How do you want your customers to describe it?”. We take the popular question, “What’s your ‘why’?” and fully flesh it out by defining it in detail along with your ‘how,’ your ‘who,’ your brand persona, your dream client or customer, and more. 

 Some clients will have fully formed ideas on all these things, while others may have yet to have concrete thoughts beyond their primary goal. Many are somewhere in between, and all are perfectly fine! I enjoy collaborating and advising clients to see them to their finish line, however they define it.

 All of this information enables me to create mood boards for the design. A mood board is a selection of design samples gathered from Pinterest, Instagram, or a simple Google search that embodies what the client is looking for. For instance, from the information collected from the worksheet my client and I did for Her Helm, I knew she wanted the design to convey femininity, push boundaries, and have bold, clean typography. After seeing the mood boards, the client will highlight the images that best match their vision, such as this for Her Helm:

The benefits of this step are critical: it ensures that my client and I are on the same page, saves us both a great deal of time, and enables my first round of designs to be as strong as possible.

For Her Helm, the client’s feedback from the mood boards gave me the insights I needed to design multiple book cover concepts: 

My process for designing books, logos, marketing collateral, and anything else is grounded in experience for what best helps me make my clients happy. My worksheet and mood boards are invaluable in ensuring that outcome. Happy clients, happy life! 

Reach out with any questions; I’m always happy to help!