Your company’s brand is one of your most valuable assets. When developing a new campaign, refreshing your visual identity or simply creating a new brochure, it is crucial that you partner with a team of professional and experienced designers who understand the importance of projecting the right image for your organization. Involving a Registered Graphic Designer in the early stages of development will ensure the project aligns with the your strategic goal. If you want your project to be successful, here are five tips that will help you when working with graphic designers:

• Define your goal: What do you wish to accomplish with your project? Do you want to increase the awareness of your brand? Refresh a dated looking website? Communicate more effectively with your stakeholders? Once the goal has been determined, experienced graphic designers follow a series of methodologies to create a strategic plan to make it happen. Defining your goal sets the tone and overall expectations of the project from the beginning.
• Trust your designer: Go in to the project with an open mind. It is always good practice to have some ideas about the direction of your project, however, expect that the direction may change based on the design discovery and research results. Graphic designers receive extensive training in colour theory, typography and design layout, but great graphic designers keep on top of all aspects of design-related trends and technology (such as responsive website design). They often come up with concepts that you may not have considered because of the deep of their knowledge in the industry.
• Involve key decision makers: Key decision makers should be involved in essential meetings as they bring high-level and strategic insight to a project. Input from the entire group during the beginning stages of a project (i.e. design discovery, STRATA and design presentation), ensures buy-in from key decision makers. It also instills confidence and a deeper understanding of the steps involved in the design journey when making major decisions.
• Keep the audience in mind: Don’t design for yourself, design for your audience. Experienced designers will guide and work with you to uncover the likes and dislikes of your target audience. Graphic designers also help you look at concepts through the eyes of your audience instead of personal preferences.
• Develop long-term relationships: Developing long-term relationships with designers can work out to your advantage. As you work together on more projects, designers become increasingly familiar with your corporate culture, target audiences and company brand. In the long run, the more you understand each other the more successful your projects will be.

At the end of the day, you and your graphic designer want to create a successful project, have measurable results and a partner you work well with. By using the above tips you can ensure that you, your graphic designer and target audience will all benefit.