Whether you’re a startup, company looking to rebrand or developing a new digital product, you’ve surely wondered how you can save time and resources on the building your project. Here we take a look into a few tips that help save serious 💵 and ⏰.
This is the most important thing you can do. Most project delays come from waiting for content. Think body copy, product images, mockups, video, anything that makes your brand unique.
Designers and devs can use dummy content for a long while before the actual content comes in. But in ALL cases it’s recommended to work with actual content instead of lorem ipsums or temporary imagery. You can never get a right feel of the design, and implicitly your brand, as long as you don’t use the final content.
Preparing the content usually delays deadlines in a brand development project at least 30 days. For website, it might add to even more. Having the content prepared, talking to copywriters, having products mockups ready, picking out stock photography saves you many headaches along the way.
So, how far in advance should you start worrying about this? Usually your design studio can help you plan out this step from the beginning of the project. If they don’t have any team members that can handle content creation in-house, they can put you in touch with specialised vendors or freelancers that offer those services. But it’s always a good idea to start this from day 1.
Building a brand, a website or an app is a linear process. Once you sign off on a step in the process, it doesn’t make sense to come back to it.
There are many times when you might have a change of heart about something. Say a logo. But you’re already designing the app, the devs already exported the assets. Changing it would mean putting everything on hold, going back to the logo designs, doing something new, reintegrating it, re-exporting it and a whole mess along the way. How can you avoid that?
You know yourself and your team best. If uncertain about something, take 2 days more to think about it. Offer as much feedback as you’d like. Change everything if you must. But change it during that stage. When signing something off, make sure that you are ready to stick to it for good. Doing that will save you tons of time and project interferences along the way.
Do you want to let the design studio handle everything? Are you more of a control freak and like to be part of every stage of the process? Do you want a single logo with thorough motivation behind it? Do you want a myriad of choices to choose from?
Deciding this means knowing yourself. If you let the design studio know your expectations beforehand, that single bit of info can change the way you communicate throughout the project. Lay down the terms very clearly. Say how you’d like things handled. Remember, it’s a negotiation at every stage.
Designers, devs, photographers, content writers, illustrators all have their styles. And you have yours. Communicating it from the start means you can settle on terms before you start your project. And that means you won’t have to have a lengthy talk about that mid-way through the project.
Don’t go with someone just because they’ve been recommended, have great reviews or give you a great quote. Find a studio that resonates with your style.
And it’s not just aesthetics. Look into how they do things. How they work, what they believe in, what their process is. You’ll find that each studio is unique in some way. If you want a mass-market project go for a studio that can handle mass-market approaches. If you want think you’d want to have lots of meeting at your offices, pick a studio that is willing to do that. Don’t skimp on researching partners at this stage.
Do a spreadsheet with all the shortlisted studios. List advantages and disadvantages, budgets, aesthetics, how likely you think they are to do a good job on your project. Most good studios will turn down a project if they feel it doesn’t align to their prerequisites. Keep that in mind to find a partner that will take your project to the right place.
LOOT is a minimal team studio that focuses on creating very efficient and highly aesthetic solution for digital & physical products.
Our approach is focused on saving time and resources while providing a meaningful and solid end result. The framework we use reduces interactions, saves time and allows the delivery of complex project in record time. We work especially well with startups and lean businesses that prioritise growth and like to iterate fast, in well structured sprints.
We can provide support for branding or rebranding projects, website development and app design and development.
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