At Collective Design, you’ll find meticulous attention to detail every step of the way. We’ve boiled down the process of design and communication development into five overall phases outlined below. Each phase is then fine-tuned to your specific project, tasks and time line. We’ll walk through our process with you and modify them for your needs.

Research and Understanding
The first and most important step in our process is to listen to your project objectives and understand the full scope of your needs. After an initial meeting, we’ll research more additional facts with you, such as your corporate mission, your product description, corporate or product marketing goals, positioning and competitive analysis, your revenue goals, audience, budget and your time line. If necessary, we’ll generate a brand audit to fully understand your company’s culture, identity and mission.

Strategic Development
After gathering all of our information, we’ll develop a creative strategy that includes a complete understanding of our research, plus a strategic plan on how to achieve your objectives. The creative strategy can include any or all of the following: a creative brief, a communications plan, direct marketing plan, a product launch plan, brand audit or technical audit. For Web or multi-media projects, our technical audit will help you understand the scope of your existing technical capabilities and what you’ll need to achieve your goals.

Concept Development
After approval of the strategic plan, we begin our creative process. This includes developing concepts, copy headlines, graphic design, photography and illustration. For a typical project, we’ll develop multiple conceptual ideas to meet the objectives and goals outlined in the strategic plan. During this phase, you may want to review conceptual ideas and make changes before you make a final decision on which concept you would like to execute.

Production
After choosing a concept we then move on to production. During this phase, we’ll write the final copy, format graphics for print, Web or multi-media purposes, and digitally enhance, composite or correct any photography or images. If your project is a Web site, we’ll begin development and coding. During this phase, there will be two to three reviews of each draft and a final approval before the project is printed or launched to the public.

Project Launch
In this phase, we’ll tie up any loose ends including re-formatting or re-sizing your projects for different media purposes, working with mail houses to ship any direct mail campaigns, attending press checks and bringing your project to fruition. For a Web site launch we’ll include testing and technical administration services. We also offer follow-up and tracking to test the success of your project.