Digital Media
Digital media is a daily focus of my design work. From social media ads to digital billboards, to presentation graphics and e-newsletter blasts, over the years I’ve had a hand at all sorts of different digital pieces.
Regardless of the shape, complexity, or audience of the final piece, I was involved in every step of the process for these pieces. My design process is usually broken down into four steps:
- Establish details & requirements
- Design & review
- Implementation
Establish Details & Requirements
Step one is to always figure out the nitty gritty details. This can be something as simple as “I need a quick poster for a cafe special” or as detailed “Build a campaign with this exact language and theme, conveying this exact tone”. Things like different dimension variants, target audience, and timelines all also come into play at this step.
Design & Review
I begin to design in earnest once the theme & requirements have been established. Starting with simple pencil to paper designs and ending with a small flight of different options, the design process usually aims to have a maximum of three rounds of revisions. By that point, I aim to have a semi-finalized design, barring small tweaks or palette swaps.
Depending on the scale of the project and number of interdepartmental parties involved, the review portion can be the lengthiest part of the process. To mitigate this, I make sure to communicate clear feedback deadlines to related parties, and follow up where needed.
Implementation
Once the design is approved by all related parties, I finally pass along the final design. For items like digital ads or billboards that are hosted on external sites or location, they are usually passed along via Dropbox, email, or an ftp site on their end. For local items, such as aquarium.org implemented or items pushed to our social, I will either implement them myself or pass them along to our social media manager for upload.
Interactive & Fillable Forms
While not as visually cool as ads or infographics, having a pdf that you can fill or click can be a huge step in streamlining the process for an organization. We’ve come a long way from having to fax over signed documents! Most interactive pdfs I deal with have been designed for such in InDesign, but I also have experience quickly updating an old form in Acrobat for fast turnaround time when a fresh design isn’t feasible or necessary. The following forms & documents are some of the most recent, featuring elements like fillable fields, check boxes, or external links.