Making a design is not only just directly jump into the media used to create a final version of the design. When you creating a design for someone / some group of people, they may do not have a same taste as you have. They may have a different perception and if they are do not like your design; it may lead to an unsuccessful design. Furthermore, your time that used to creating that piece of design is just a waste; they may hire another graphic designer to finish their project.
Graphic designer should avoid that case to be happen, they should know that graphic design is objectively evaluated, it is not subjective. Then how to avoid this kind of situation? The solution is surely, graphic designer should doing some research first before they continuing create the project. This paper will explain about the kind of research on graphic design, what should be researched and the exact advantage of research in graphic design. As an old folk said, “ the picture can say a thousand word. ”, this is where the problem actually started, how if the word said is wrong, it will led to a more and more problem.
Doing research before presenting design to stakeholders or owners are very supportive and vital for ending a graphic design debate, increase graphic design process and understanding the actual project of how the design should be done. Generally, research on graphic design is divided by two, stakeholder’s research and user research. Firstly, try to make a personal meeting with the stakeholders, during this meeting, try to ask as much as you can that related to a design project that you did. The examples of the questions are, who is the target audience for this design project? What is the message that they want to deliver? What are the specs of the project? What is the budget? Is there any specific deadline? Etc. The second type of graphic design research is user research.
A professional graphic designer should know what the user want, although this is very objective, it can be limited by the target audience. If the target audience of this design process is kids, graphic designer should know the characteristics that kids have and want, they also should conduct a research or may be an interview with the user. The result of asking questions alone may not provide you with all the answers, but they will enable you to have more concrete graphic design discussions with users. Having direct conversations with users about graphic design can be challenging task to do , but it will make graphic design presentations more successful because you’ll be relying less on subject-matter expertise and more on relevant stories about users. With doing a research to the stakeholder’s and the users, graphic designer will get some main advantage .
First, research can ending the debates between graphic designer and their stakeholder’s. Generally, some meeting is not productive enough because they just debate about small things, such as the color, shape, or even a wrong words that written there. It should be minimized to get big advantages. Another advantage of research is to help the designers to bring the team or group’s mind to think objectively, not only based on their intuition. So that they can work as a team well.
Sometimes, there are different kinds of perception between graphic designers although they are in the same team, this kind of situation should be avoided because they work as a team. Besides, research can also help the graphic designer Understand the actual project is very crucial point for visual designer. Together with their stakeholder’s, graphic designer should know the company’s vision to get insight into success factors that help in understanding the project. As the numbers of stakeholders involve, the designer should be able to gather keyword from different stakeholders so that the designer can identify patterns. Another point that should also be understood by the graphic designer is understanding the key graphic concepts.
Later on, this interface should be present to users. In conclusion, research is no doubt a very important step on graphic design process. Graphic designer can avoid the never ended debate between them and their stakeholders with doing research first. Besides, if there is a team of graphic designers who work on a same project, they can increase their productivity because they can work well together.
Furthermore, doing research before making a graphic design for the final result can make the graphic designer understand the actual of the project so that the project can be done successfully.
