How successful will we be in interpreting your needs? How can we do it most effectively? How can we do it most efficiently? How much will it cost?

The Value of Your Investment

The value of hiring a creative professional is much greater than merely getting promotional material that is aesthetically pleasing. It is an investment in your professional success. Whether you are developing, refreshing or entirely re branding your image, successful design helps build your credibility and reputation as a leader in your field. The return is tied to how well the final design strengthens and reinforces your existing sales and marketing strategies. Successful design helps ensure these efforts reach their full potential.

Laying The Foundation

Even before accepting a project, we want to understand your vision for your company as well as the underlying needs this project will address. Our first step is to conduct an information-gathering meeting. We are interested not only in scheduling, budget and job specifications, but also in your preferences, target audience, and objectives. And, of course, we want to know all the features and benefits of your products and/or services. Then we submit a proposal for your consideration. Once the project has been agreed to, we submit a draft production schedule and a creative brief. These documents help keep us on the same page in terms of timeline and creative and strategic direction. We have found this process helps keep our focus and also helps ensure that what we produce is not only creatively excellent, but strategically targeted.

Developing The Right Ideas

Despite popular misconceptions, good creative work doesn’t come in a flash of inspiration; it comes from lots of trial and error. This is why we also need time to consider several approaches (concepts), to work them through, try them out, then revise and refine them. There are also usually some practical matters we need to address before submitting our ideas—sub-contractor availability and estimates, scheduling requirements, and so forth. All this, plus the need to schedule our workflow in a businesslike fashion, means that we normally ask for up to two weeks, depending on the job’s complexity, before we submit our rough approaches (concepts) for your review.

Of course, if you have a rush project or deadline pressure we can adjust our workflow and timing accordingly. We then present our initial concepts to you. They consist of PDFs or printouts of the project. They are adequate to convey what we believe is the best approach to take, taking into consideration your budget, schedule, objectives, and preferences. On the other hand, they are not so well-developed as to have wasted time and effort if we need a course correction. After presenting, we’ll ask for your comments. They are our input for revising the rough concept into a finished one. Revisions normally take about 1 to 2 weeks, and we schedule a second presentation shortly thereafter. From the input at this second presentation, further minor refinements are made as necessary. This is also the time when, if we haven’t done so already, we finalize the production timetable and schedule any additional services needed; such as writing, photography or illustration.

Ensuring Your Satisfaction

We recommend the finished design be checked for fact, spelling and details. Any activities that will affect the schedule or budget will be identified in writing. Our goal is to keep your project moving ahead quickly, smoothly, and cost-effectively; to make sure that we’ll produce even better results than you hired us for. Our Charges Like all service organizations our invoices are based on the time we invest in a project as well as the value our services add to the success of your business. Project costs can range from a low of several hundred dollars up to many thousands, depending on the scope, our clients’ needs and budgets. We always provide an estimate for approval before starting and adhere to our estimates unless project specifications change. If the job scope changes, we provide a revised budget upon request. We look forward to helping you be more successful through the strategic use of creativity.

Sincerely,

Carol Hillson Principal,
Carol Hillson Creative