A day in the life of a designer at Studio Republic
Introduction
There’s no such thing as a ‘typical day’ in the life of a designer, which is what makes our job so interesting. We often work with different clients at various points of a project’s process and have the opportunity to flex our creative muscles across different mediums and platforms. Being a designer fills each day with inspiration, excitement, and challenge.
While it’s almost impossible to lay out what a daily ‘to do’ list might look like, here’s a look at what goes on behind the scenes and how our designers bring idea to reality.
Internal meetings
Although no two days ever look the same, our one constant is our internal meetings. We always make time for a minimum of two check-ins per day – one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to guide us through all our activities. This is an opportunity to share work updates, gather feedback, explore briefs, discuss scheduling, and get strategic with our senior leadership team.
Client presentation/pitching
Onboarding new clients and securing new projects can be a nerve-wracking and exciting time in equal measure. To showcase our expertise and skills in delivering top-quality design, each week we spend time meticulously preparing proposals and pitches for new or existing projects. This also includes allocating presentation time to show-off our brand concepts, web designs and strategic ideas to clients and stakeholders.
Research
As the first, and arguably most important, stage of any brand project, we spend a great deal of time on research. Getting clued up on each client, their work, their audiences, their competitors, and objectives means we can arm ourselves with all the necessary information to start creating effective design.
We use multiple methodologies to help define the challenges and possible solutions, including brand audits, competitor analysis, accessibility testing, mood-boarding, and industry trend research.
Scoping workshops
As part of the research process, we also deliver scoping workshops. This is an integral step that enables us to gather invaluable anecdotal stories and insights which define our objectives, approach and key focus areas of the project. Each workshop requires time for planning, delivery and the creation of a post-workshop insights document to summarise the findings.
Ideation
With planning and research in the bag, we can move on to the most fun and challenging part of our job – ideation. Here we can really let our creative expression and exploration run free and start to form key concepts through developing:
- Visual collages
- Mind-mapping
- Loose sketching
- Word association
- Colour exploration
- Typography experimentation
Animation exploration
When we’ve sculpted our design ideas into a look we’re happy with, we then spend time looking at additional enhancements, such as animation. Introducing animation can help bring brand concepts to life, elevate design elements and add a spark of personality. But this is more than a one-step process! To create an effective animation, we undertake numerous experiments to test our ideas and find the sweet spot of where, and how, to add animated elements.
Website design / UI design
Many of the projects we work on include website design, so we weave this into the brand development process to ensure every step is seamless. We consider how we will express the identity digitally and how we can create a distinctive and consistent user experience. This involves:
- Applying a brand identity to wireframes
- Developing custom UI elements and module design
- Building out pages across desktop and mobile
- Creating interactive prototypes for client approval
Internal marketing
Finally, we also invest a lot of time into marketing to shout about the amazing work our clients do and how we’ve been able to support them. By creating a suite of case studies, blogs, reports, and social media content, we can celebrate the achievements of our design and the impact this has on our clients.
Conclusion
A day in the life of a designer is varied, diverse, and driven by endless creativity. Bringing an idea to reality takes time, but the rewards of seeing the final product in place and helping clients realise their vision is worth it every time.