Working with a designer can be a daunting process and there are a lot of questions you should be asking yourself before you hire a professional. Today I will be covering 7 questions your designer should be asking you at the start of your project together. If your designer doesn’t cover these questions in some form or another, then that should be a red flag. Let’s dive into the questions.

1. What your aim for the project is?

It’s really important your designer asks what your aim for your project is, your brand needs to match up to your business needs. If they don’t understand what you want to achieve, then how will they help you achieve it? This could be impressing a certain publication or blog, to enticing more customers or maybe your brand is communicating the WRONG message and attracting the wrong audience. Your designer should know what your problems and future goals are.

2. Who is your target audience?

This is a big one. If your target audience is children / mums, then your brand shouldn’t be looking like a florist / wedding business. Although this is a very broad example, sometimes your audience can be a mix of people or a really niche group of people, but your designer will know how to handle this. This is essential in your brand connecting with your audience, if it doesn’t align with your audience properly, then you aren’t going to get those people attracted to you.

3. Who are your competitors?

It’s important that your graphic designer researches into your competitors, not only to see what they are doing but what they are NOT doing. It’s good to get information and see how these business are branded and what works, but it’s really essential to see how you differ from these business and what can make you stand out, while attracting the right audience.

4. What makes your business special?

If your designer doesn’t know what makes you different from the other then how are they going to set you apart from competitors? It’s important that your brand is authentically you and your business, so whatever your unique selling point is, that’s what should be present for your audience to see straight away. This can be done in a number away right down to your colours and fonts, even illustration style.

5. Who are you profitable clients and why do they buy from you?

This goes back to the target audience, and this is a slight variation on it but is still very important. Your profitable clients can be different from your target audience, your audience is anyone you want viewing your business, your profitable clients are the clients you love. This may not be all or any of your current clients or customers at the moment. But your designer should be asking ‘who is the dream client?’ These are the ones who love your products, who get excited about working with you, who refer others to you and get you. These are the people your designer wants to entice to your brand so it’s important to know who these people are.

6. What values does your business stand for?

Every business has different values, which are things you stand for in your business and things that are important to you. These should be taken into account and help shape the brand strategy and direction. These values should be at the core of your brand messaging and presented in tag lines.

7. How should your new brand reflect your big vision?

As businesses grow, they change and develop. It’s important for your designer to understand not only where you business is now but where it is going. Say you have a handmade business and sell handmade candles and one day you hope to get these candles in department stores. This will make a huge difference to your brand direction as they will have to appeal to certain audience and impress a certain people – the people stocking your candles. They need to become a little more commercial and research should be done into the type of products they stock and the branding of those products. Your future and what you want to achieve and your business direction is something your graphic designer should know and be excited about for you.

I send my clients a comprehensive deep dive questionnaire that allows me to get all the information I need before working on a brand strategy with my client. Which is available to download as a free 11-page workbook! I then go on to do hours worth of research, brainstorming and making sure I have a very strong picture in my head of what the brand needs to communication and HOW it should work before designing a thing. If your designer isn’t asking you these questions then they are missing out vital information and important steps in the brand strategy process. To create a brand that really aligns with your business and create the most effective growth in your business has to come from a solid foundation. The information from these questions are the building blocks for building a strategy which then goes to build your brand. Make sure they aren’t missing out these questions!

If you found this post helpful, please do let me know in the comments!