How to do effective research for graphic design briefs

Introduction

I think most would agree that researching for design briefs is essential however, rarely is it done well. Often research becomes a search for inspiration rather than a productive exercise in gathering and organising relevant information. Not that inspiration isn’t important of course, but good research bolsters successful and effective visual communication beyond just looking good. In this article, I explore a number of methods that can be used to develop a reliable and replicable framework for researching design briefs. I focus on secondary rather than primary research in this article as primary research comes with its own methods and ethical requirements. So, I am concerned more with gathering relevant information that already exists, whether it is online or in print.

What is the purpose of researching for design briefs?

The purpose of research for graphic design projects is to establish the necessary knowledge needed to produce effective visual communication. Whilst for some, graphic design might be concerned with making things look good, we want to promote the idea that graphic design is about communication. And to be able to communicate effectively, you need to know certain things. Knowledge about your client, the purpose of the brief, audiences, and the relevant contexts of the project can be used to establish useful parameters for your work to ensure it is focused and relevant.

What do we want to find out by doing research?

For each brief, there are four key areas that a graphic designer should explore for effective research. There may well be other areas that are important for specific briefs, but these are the four areas that should be explored for each graphic design project that you do:

Purpose: What is the purpose of the brief? This may be detailed in the brief itself however, often your client will not provide you with such a detailed brief. Much can be learned by speaking with your client. Why do they want this work? What do they hope to achieve by changing or updating their visual communications? However, you may want to commit to some extra research to learn more. You might be able to identify another purpose or benefit of the work that your client has not considered.

Client: No matter how well you think you know your client, their business, and their needs, always ensure that you draw together, and organise useful information about your client. Things to consider might be their brand identity, their tone-of-voice, or their reach (local or global). Sometimes, you may not have a client when doing graphic design briefs. For instance, you may be working on a self-initiated project. In this case, you need to be clear about what you want from this project and why it needs to exist.

Audiences: For me, this aspect of researching for design briefs is the most important and perhaps the part that is most likely to be neglected. Often, designers (especially young designers and freelancers) place most of their energy on pleasing their client, and rightly so. However, it is not always true that clients have all the information about their audience — their customers or potential customers — necessary to make effective graphic designs. To make audience research meaningful for us we need to dig much deeper than simple generalisations. It is useful to organise audience data into groups (such as Gen Z or Millennial), yes, however, we must recognise that people are complex and don’t necessarily construct their identities and lifestyles according to market segmentation terms. We need to get a solid understanding of people’s identities, behaviours, needs, wants, tastes, and dispositions in order to engineer powerful and impactful visual strategies.

Contexts: This is a very broad term used in relation to graphic design research. The term basically captures anything other than those aspects already stated that could be beneficial to know. The word context refers to the situation in which something exists. For a design brief, this is the situation within which the brief, the client, the audience, and the work you are about to create is located.

What are some of the methods of gathering and organising information?

The process of gathering information itself is fairly straightforward and I don’t want to patronise you by telling you how to use Google. However, there are some important points to remember when beginning your search. Firstly, there is likely to be information available on just about anything you want to know about. However, don’t settle with the first piece of information you find. Say you are doing some background research on a new client, it is advisable not to focus only on information that your client publishes. It would be prudent to also find out what other people think of them so make sure you look further than the obvious. Secondly, we should always evaluate our sources when gathering information both online and offline. It is very easy these days to publish both online and offline and not everyone who publishes is an expert or an authority on what they publish. That’s not to say that we should ignore non-reputable sources. Rather, we should be aware of who is writing and why they are writing it. Someone, let’s say a journalist, who writes an article about a particular demographic or consumer group, for example, is not necessarily an authority on this matter but nonetheless may have an interesting perspective. Another thing to look out for is content that has been written by AI. This is not easy to spot and again not necessarily bad but it could exist solely to achieve greater search engine results for whoever publishes it so we should tread carefully, be aware of who is publishing it, and what they hope to gain by doing so. Thirdly, research isn’t research if you are not documenting what you are finding out. It is all too easy to get tunnel vision and only see what we want to see. Making accurate and consistent notes on your findings is a way to ensure that we can check and test any assumptions we might make.

The Designer’s Project Book is a handy resource that provides useful templates for organising research, ideas, and project management and includes templates for some of the methods discussed later in this article. There is also this beautiful notebook which also offers useful templates to record findings: M-2 systems — note database.

Gathering information is one thing but being able to organise it properly so that it is usable for a graphic design project is something else. Notes often remain as scribbles in a book and are forgotten. The purpose of adopting a more structured approach to research is to ensure that what you learn has some sort of effect on what you create. Here are a number of ways that you can approach collecting and organising information:

Facts / Effects

This is not a method as such but rather a way of thinking about research that avoids falling into a “that’s quite interesting” state of mind. It’s great to discover interesting things, for sure, but if those interesting things have no bearing on your project then they are not much use to you. Think about what you are researching in terms of facts and effects. So, not just a list of facts scribbled down and ignored, but a list of facts accompanied by an explanation of how you intend to use them. Thinking in terms of facts and effects prompts us to consider what we are learning and contextualise that learning within our project. An example of this might be:

Fact: my target audience is noted to be more ecologically conscious and engage in everyday sustainable practices.

Effect: consider ways of promoting sustainability in our communications or engaging with design and communication in a sustainable way. Avoid greenwashing. Must be an authentic and genuine desire for sustainability.

Perceptual Maps

Perceptual maps are a way of organising the analysis of a range of related and competing brands, products, services, or companies. In market research it is based on your understanding of your audience’s perception of your brand, company, etc. (or your client’s brand) however, as a graphic designer you can also use this method to organise information about the visual contexts of your graphic design project in a meaningful way. It allows you to consider where your client’s existing visual strategy is located in relation to their competitors and where they/you would like it to be positioned. This can then lead to a number of conclusions about what visual communication strategies are proving to be effective for other brands or organisations and therefore how you can utilise this knowledge for your own needs.

Perceptual maps use a dual axis (vertical and horizontal) to map, or position, the images you are exploring. It is up to you to decide what the vertical and horizontal axes represent but they must represent a scale of some sort. For example, you may want to look at minimalist vs maximalist on one axis and the age of the target market on the other axis. This would provide an understanding of what compositional approaches are used for different audience age ranges.

The great thing about this method is that you can use it for just about any aspect of visual strategy and brand strategy you can think of and they always give great insights that are not only usable and meaningful for design purposes but also a helpful way of organising and presenting your research findings.

Hierarchy

No, I don’t mean hierarchy in layout! Research hierarchy is about organising your research into a list of priorities. By priorities, I mean what details have you learned from your research and how will you handle them in the design work. Inevitably, there will be aspects of what you have learned from research that are more important than others. So, establishing a hierarchy is a way of formalising these priorities. It is something that can be done individually or agreed by a team and shared.

A great way to visualise a hierarchy like this is inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Psychologist, Abraham Maslow developed a visualisation of a person’s psychological needs and how some needs take precedence over others. Those aspects of a person’s needs listed on the bottom level represent the fundamental needs of the individual such as their physiological needs, while those listed above build upon those fundamental needs leading to, at the top level, self-actualisation. For Maslow, you cannot have self-actualisation without fulfilling the needs below it on this hierarchy model.

We can also think about our design and visual strategy in this way based on our understanding gained from research. By researching meaningfully — thinking in terms of facts and effects — we can begin to understand what aspects need to be prioritised. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, those aspects at the bottom represent the fundamental needs of the project. The fundamental needs of a project are those that all the other needs rest upon. What the client wants you to achieve cannot be done without these. For example, a corporate brochure requires, as fundamental, a clean and precise approach to typography and layout. Without this, other needs, such as a particular tone-of-voice or inspiring imagery, would be much less impactful or meaningful.

Audience research

This is perhaps the trickiest aspect of researching for graphic design briefs however, it is also the most important. By doing audience research you are aiming to get a good sense of who your designs are intended for so as to design your work in such a way that better appeals to this particular kind of person. Part of this involves identifying who the audience is although for a commercial brief you can expect that much of this work has already been done. Marketing departments will likely identify the best audience for a product, service, or campaign based on their knowledge of the business and markets which are likely to yield the most revenue. However, for many graphic design projects this information is not available so you must commit to some extra research to identify these factors. Marketing terms such as Gen Z, Millennials, and Baby Boomers are all terms that have entered public discourse. In fact, these terms are so ubiquitous that they are fast becoming identity characteristics that people use to identify themselves. However, it is wise to remember that terms like this are used to simplify the complexities inherent in large groups of people for the purposes of making sales. However, people are all individuals and their lives are complex, diverse, and maybe even a little contradictory. So, it is wise to remember that you are communicating to individuals as well as groups distinguished as a whole. Other ways that marketeers identify audiences are:

Demographics

Demographics describes the characteristics of a group of people. Demographics covers the most basic and fundamental characteristics that can affect people’s behaviour such as their age, income, gender, etc. Demographics will often be based on market research which will demonstrate that people of a particular mix of characteristics are most likely to participate in a particular practice or buy a particular product. For instance, demographics might suggest that the main customers for a high-end Italian restaurant have the following characteristics:

· In a long-term relationship

· Family

· Middle-class

· Lower-middle management or professional occupations

· Suburban dwelling

· Educated at least to undergraduate degree

Psychographics

While demographics serve the most basic and fundamental aspects of who a target audience is, psychographics dig a little deeper into their lifestyle, tastes, and needs. While demographics may focus more on their circumstances and how these might affect their behaviour and choices, psychographics tends to focus more on why, that is, the psychological functions that influence a person’s behaviour. Aspects that could be explored through psychographics are lifestyle, beliefs, opinions, interests, and personality types. Exploring these aspects alongside demographic factors is likely to give a much more rounded understanding of who the target audience is. Sticking with our Italian restaurant example we could also add the following psychographic factors:

· Likes to express their taste through what they consume or purchase

· Conservative views

· Politically minded

· Enjoys cultural activities

· Stays active and healthy but has traditional views about food and diet

Personas

Personas are used in a number of fields including marketing. Personas bring together target audience factors into individual profiles. These profiles represent the ideal or the archetype customer or consumer that you are marketing or communicating to. It is important to note that these profiles are not of real people. In fact, it may be that, despite all this work, there is no real individual that represents the ideal audience member and fulfills all the characteristics set out in our previous work. Hence, why personas are important: they represent the ideal rather than the real. Personas are also important because they humanise what can be quite a dehumanising process. The field of UX design also embraces personas as part of their work and have refined the process of creating personas. This is a good overview of how to create a strong persona.

Much of this work is about identifying who your target audience is however, just because you know who your audience is, does not mean that you know how to communicate effectively to them. As a graphic designer, further questions need to be asked based on your understanding of the audience. Particularly, you want to get a sense of how demographic and psychographic factors affect your audience’s visual preferences and dispositions. Often, our work is about creating something that is “eye-catching” and such terms are taken to be self-evident however, what is eye-catching or appealing to one person is not necessarily the same for all. Whether or not it is a good thing, we are, to some extent at least, socialised into certain preferences. Our social class, gender, age, etc. have a bearing on what we see as appealing in the products, services, etc. that we choose to consume. So, based on all the target audience information that we have been given or that we have identified for ourselves, we need to then ask how these translate into visual preferences and dispositions. Think about how you might approach the graphics for a product packaging design if your target audience was identified to be mostly female-identifying, upper middle-class, and aged 50–60. Now, think about how you would approach a product packaging design if your audience was identified to be mostly male-identifying, aged 20–30, hospitality workers. These two audiences represent very different preferences and dispositions toward visual communication. It is important here that you do not rely entirely on your own assumptions about what other people find appealing. Find out any information you can about your target audience using demographic and psychographic factors as a starting point. You can also explore existing work that has a proven history with your target audience and ask yourself what makes it appealing.

Conclusion

This all might seem like quite an undertaking and while researching you will no doubt be resisting the urge to dive into your design work. Of course, time does not always allow for such rigour too. Often, strict deadlines will restrict how much time you can dedicate to research. However, any research that you can do, as long as it is done meaningfully, will assist in making your design work more effective and more impactful. Developing your own strategy using the methods above, or any other approaches of your own, will certainly help to streamline your process.