What to Expect When Working with Ribbons of Red
March 10th, 2010 written by Renee Swigert + 1 Person Left Love
Hiring the right web and/or graphic designer is essential for any business, but it can be a stressful decision to make. The questions can be endless, and so can the search—especially if you don’t know what to expect or what to even look for when hiring the right design professional.
How will you capture the essence of my business? Will you be receptive to my ideas too? How do I know if Ribbons of Red is the right fit for me? These are great questions to ask and ones that I answer on a daily basis for potential clients. In this post, you will learn about our design process, how we work, and the types of clients we work best with. Ultimately, this post will aid you in deciding if Ribbons of Red is the right web and graphic design studio for you.
Get to Know Ribbons of Red
Before contacting us for a quote, we want you to get to know us first. It may sound silly, but even if you are referred by one of our favorite clients, we really encourage you to look through our website, read our story, and spend lots of time viewing our web and graphic design portfolio. Reading about the studio and our projects will give you a window into our creative process.
What to Expect When Requesting a Quote
If you are interested in working with Ribbons of Red, we ask that you fill out our free quote form to get started. Doing so will help us understand your budget, timeline, and the scope of your project. All quote submissions are replied to within 1-2 business days, and each quote contains not only pricing, but also a detailed description of what is included with each design project you need. The quote form also provides a great starting point for conversation. Along with pricing, we will spend time getting to know your project on a basic level to see if it is inline with the services we offer. If by some chance we find that our talents are not a good fit for your project, we will refer you to one of our trusted colleagues.
Our Design Process
Step 1 – Discovery: We want to get to the heart of what makes you and your business special. Who is your target market? What are your goals? What makes you different from your competition? We ask you all the tough questions through our Design Questionnaire, and then we listen. You can’t give us too much information—we want to hear it all. The more we know, the more we can help you create a fantastic design that will speak, engage, and connect with your own clientele.
Step 2 – Face to Face: Once the Design Questionnaire has been filled out and returned, a formal design meeting is set up. If you are local here in Cincinnati, we’ll probably meet over coffee and sweets! If you are international or across the country, we’ll talk over the phone or on Skype. The Design Questionnaire provides a great starting point for conversation, but talking face to face (or over the phone) will allow me to gauge your personality and get to know you better—an essential part of the design process. During our design meeting we’ll go over your questionnaire, talk about any follow-up questions either of us might have, and start brainstorming for your design project.
Step 3 – Conceptualization: The Design Questionnaire and formal design meeting will be plenty of inspiration for us to get started on your design project. At this point, we throw on some rock music, and get lost in your design for hours… picking the perfect colors, best looking fonts, and carefully choosing a layout that will engage your audience. When the initial concept is completed, you will receive it via email in PDF format, along with a description that explains why we did what we did! From there, we will work together to make any necessary changes until the design is finalized.
Step 4 – Implementation (Website Design and/or Blog Only): Creating a beautiful concept is only half of our job, the other part is making it come to life! During this step, your approved website or blog design will be coded into a functional website. We build all of our websites and blogs either on your server or on our test server, and you will receive a link to watch us work behind the scenes! You can check back whenever you like to see all the progress being made. This also allows us to work closely together to fine tune any last minute changes to copy or small details.
Step 5 – Go Live (Website Design and/or Blog Only): When your website or blog is finished, Ribbons of Red will set it live online so you don’t have to. We’ll talk with your web host and take care of all the geeky little details. And like a proud mama, once your site has been released into the spotlight, we’ll tell everyone we know about it! We even submit our best designs to award shows and popular design galleries in the industry. We want you to get as much exposure as possible—you never know where it might lead!
Are You Our Ideal Client?
We have clients ranging from individual business owners to household names—clients who are local, national, and halfway across the world. Sure, great design comes from hard work and talent, but great design also comes from communication and trust. We only want clients who are serious about their business, trust us, and know that professional design will take their business to the next level.
Our ideal client is someone who…
1. Knows what they want.
We’re not saying you should come armed with a portfolio of design ideas, but we need to know what inspires you, what makes you shine, and what makes you tick! Your ideas and thoughts help us create the best design possible for you and your business. So the more you communicate, the better your designs will be!
2. Hires us for our expertise and talent.
We value your opinion/ideas as we believe design is very much a collaboration; however, giving us a draft logo you came up with or a blog you designed doesn’t really make sense. After all, you hired us for our professional talent and knowledge. So arm us with all the inspiration and ideas you have, but leave the designing to us, won’t you?
3. Realizes design is an investment.
Design is an investment like anything else, and if you aren’t ready to invest in custom design, please wait until you are!
Some Beautiful Words From Our Clients…
“Renee has been such an amazing, integral part of my photography business journey. I can’t put into words how much I appreciate her and her creative genius. She has impeccable attention to detail, wonderful customer service and care, and the ability to deliver above-and-beyond designs. To be honest, I never understood how important it was to invest in branding my business—I sincerely thought that it was something I could do on my own. So I did, and I had a sporadic clients. It wasn’t until Renee created my brand that my business grew. Not many people can pinpoint the day that their business really took off—but I can.” — Christine Pobke, Pobke Photography
“Renee was a complete professional from start to finish. The newsletter she designed perfectly captures the Shootsac brand, as well as the look and feel we wanted. The implementation was flawless and we couldn’t be happier with Ribbons of Red. I would highly recommend Renee to anyone with a design or newsletter need.” — Jessica Claire, Photographer + Shootsac Creator
If you are interested in working with us, give us a shout to get started!
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