We decided to come clean and let you know how we really produce. There is no back room in our office where we keep a code wizard or illustration elves.  Its creative problem solving! Some people call it Design Thinking. 

Fueled by coffee, Chinese food and chocolate, its the essential tool we use with each design task. Design Thinking provides a structure for us to follow, ensuring that nothing is overlooked, no time is wasted, and most importantly the experience of working with us and the final product exceeds your expectations. It is also how we maintain our shapely figures.

Before we start grabbing color swatches, sketching ideas or clicking away in Photoshop, we take a holistic approach to your problem, looking at the bigger picture and all of its components. We dissect to the problem. We invest time in the beginning asking the right questions. And then we answer those questions with the best possible solutions, regardless of how simple and obvious or how intricate and unconventional.

Our dedication to the process reduces cycle times, keeps quality high, maintains productivity, helps us build great client relationships.

Here is how the process works step-by-step:

1. DISCOVERY MEETING - We ask you a bunch of weird questions.

Sort of the Spanish Inquisition of the design world...but nicer. Really it’s just our way of finding out everything there is to know about you, your brand, target audience, big-picture and small-scale objectives and pretty much everything we can in order to ultimately design something you’ll love that works.

 

 

2. CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT - How the magic happens.

Research:
The first thing we’ve got to do is learn a bit about your industry. Next, what appeals to your audience - color, style, technology, language, imagery...you get the idea. Then we figure out what your competitors are doing, because we’ve got to know how to stand apart from the crowd. We take all of this information and create a set of qualifiers for any concepts we create.

 

Brainstorm:
It’s off to the races! We start throwing ideas at the white-board - words, phrases, icons, concepts. When our brains are spent, we use our qualifiers to begin eliminating unsuitable ideas. As we introduce more and more of the pre-established qualifiers, we narrow the field to a small number of concept solutions.

 

Concept-palooza:
With the idea-field narrowed to a handful of qualified options, we begin design production. We sweat, cry, scratch our heads, squint our eyes. We design, re-design and then re-re-design until we’ve got a few fairly well-developed concepts.

 

 

Refinement-ation:
...also known as the brutal in-house critique. We assess what we’ve done, challenging each concept. If a concept can’t be defended (or make it past our in-house wet blanket, Drew) then it’s got to get out of Dodge. The survivors sometimes have a few dings and dents that require another round or two of refinement before they earn the final thumbs-up.

 

 

3. CONCEPT DELIVERY - We show you what we’ve come up with.

The concepts that meet our final approval are wrapped up in glittery wrapping paper with big sparkle-y bows (translation: email) and sent off to you for review.

 

 

 
 

4. INCORPORATE CLIENT FEEDBACK - We meld our ideas with yours.

This requires partnership. You pick their favorite options, offer feedback and we rework our solutions. It’s the crucial step where your honesty and creativity means the difference between success and failure. We refine, you respond. Then we rinse and repeat as often as is necessary. It’s all about applying the perfect spit shine!

 

5. PROJECT DELIVERY - BAM! There it is!

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The prize in the Cracker Jack box. The light at the end of the tunnel....we could go on, but we think you get the picture. You're happy. We’re happy. Everybody in the car...we're going for ice cream!