34 min
Checklists And Your Design Business Resourceful Designer: Strategies for running a graphic design business
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- Design
Do you use checklists in your design business? What does your morning routine look like?
Do you follow mental checklists to prepare yourself for the day? Do you get out of bed and immediately take a shower? Do you head to the kitchen for your morning coffee? Do you turn on the TV or pull out your phone, tablet or computer to get caught up on the news from around the world? Whatever your morning routine is, chances are you do just about the same thing every day.
Without even thinking about it, you’ve created a mental checklist for yourself which you subconsciously check off items as you progress through your morning routine.
The same goes for your design business. We all use mental checklists to keep on top of what we have to do so things don’t get out of hand.
You probably have a mental checklist for the first contact with a new client, a different one for putting a website together, another before submitting a proof to a client, and a very important one before sending a job to be printed.
Checklists are a must for running an efficient design business. If you can manage your checklists all in your head than kudos to you.
But let me get back to your morning routine and ask you a question. Have you ever left the house and later realized you forgot to brush your teeth?
How could that have happened? You followed the same mental checklists you do every day. And yet you somehow forgot to brush your teeth.
It’s not that big a deal; you can always rub your teeth with your finger or tissue. Maybe chew a stick of gum. It’s not the same as brushing your teeth, but you can still make it through the day.
But what happens if you forget something from one of your businesses mental checklists?
What if you forgot to spell check a document before sending it to be printed? Or you launch a website without verifying all the links are working?
These kinds of mistakes can hurt you financially, as well as hurt your reputation.
That’s why I’m a strong believer in physical checklists.
If you had a piece of paper with your morning routine on it, you would never forget to brush your teeth because you would see it was still unchecked.
Now I’m not suggesting you create checklists for your daily life. But some parts of your design business could benefit from a digital or physical checklist.
Things like
Web Design Client questions Proofing jobs Invoicing clients Contracts Getting files ready for Print Handing over completed projects These are all areas that could benefit from checklists.
Web Design Checklists Let’s take web design for example. I have a checklist I use each and every time I begin a new web design project. It includes all the steps I do when I install Wordpress. The settings I change, including deleting the default Admin user and creating a more secure one. It also includes all the default plugins I install. I have a list of certain plugins that I install on every single website I design.
Every time I start a new web design project I pull out my checklist and go through it one by one, so I make sure nothing is overlooked. Once my list is completed I can then start designing the site.
Click here to download my checklist
Client Questions Back in episode 15 of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I went over 50 questions to ask before every new design project. In it, I covered categories like...
Questions about the company hiring you for a design project Questions about the company's target audience Questions about the company's brand Questions about the company's design preferences Questions about the design project's scale, timeframe and budget All of these questions could be made into checklists to ask clients when discussing a new design project.
Proofing Jobs I mentioned spell checking earlier, but there are many other things to look out for when proofing a job. You should be looking out for things like...
Orphans Widows Rivers in your text. Line spacing Font Styling Colour spaces These
Do you use checklists in your design business? What does your morning routine look like?
Do you follow mental checklists to prepare yourself for the day? Do you get out of bed and immediately take a shower? Do you head to the kitchen for your morning coffee? Do you turn on the TV or pull out your phone, tablet or computer to get caught up on the news from around the world? Whatever your morning routine is, chances are you do just about the same thing every day.
Without even thinking about it, you’ve created a mental checklist for yourself which you subconsciously check off items as you progress through your morning routine.
The same goes for your design business. We all use mental checklists to keep on top of what we have to do so things don’t get out of hand.
You probably have a mental checklist for the first contact with a new client, a different one for putting a website together, another before submitting a proof to a client, and a very important one before sending a job to be printed.
Checklists are a must for running an efficient design business. If you can manage your checklists all in your head than kudos to you.
But let me get back to your morning routine and ask you a question. Have you ever left the house and later realized you forgot to brush your teeth?
How could that have happened? You followed the same mental checklists you do every day. And yet you somehow forgot to brush your teeth.
It’s not that big a deal; you can always rub your teeth with your finger or tissue. Maybe chew a stick of gum. It’s not the same as brushing your teeth, but you can still make it through the day.
But what happens if you forget something from one of your businesses mental checklists?
What if you forgot to spell check a document before sending it to be printed? Or you launch a website without verifying all the links are working?
These kinds of mistakes can hurt you financially, as well as hurt your reputation.
That’s why I’m a strong believer in physical checklists.
If you had a piece of paper with your morning routine on it, you would never forget to brush your teeth because you would see it was still unchecked.
Now I’m not suggesting you create checklists for your daily life. But some parts of your design business could benefit from a digital or physical checklist.
Things like
Web Design Client questions Proofing jobs Invoicing clients Contracts Getting files ready for Print Handing over completed projects These are all areas that could benefit from checklists.
Web Design Checklists Let’s take web design for example. I have a checklist I use each and every time I begin a new web design project. It includes all the steps I do when I install Wordpress. The settings I change, including deleting the default Admin user and creating a more secure one. It also includes all the default plugins I install. I have a list of certain plugins that I install on every single website I design.
Every time I start a new web design project I pull out my checklist and go through it one by one, so I make sure nothing is overlooked. Once my list is completed I can then start designing the site.
Click here to download my checklist
Client Questions Back in episode 15 of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I went over 50 questions to ask before every new design project. In it, I covered categories like...
Questions about the company hiring you for a design project Questions about the company's target audience Questions about the company's brand Questions about the company's design preferences Questions about the design project's scale, timeframe and budget All of these questions could be made into checklists to ask clients when discussing a new design project.
Proofing Jobs I mentioned spell checking earlier, but there are many other things to look out for when proofing a job. You should be looking out for things like...
Orphans Widows Rivers in your text. Line spacing Font Styling Colour spaces These
34 min