While every business is unique, there is one thing they all pay attention to. Budget. It’s something our agency is sensitive to, and it’s the reason why we work closely with clients to give them design solutions that optimize their project budget.

We also advise them about steps they can take to save money on design and production without sacrificing quality. Now, we’ll share a few of our top recommendations to help control costs and prevent project costs from exploding.

Stay within your allotted revisions

Whether it’s a company rebrand or a logo design, a certain number of edits are included for every project. On average, this can range between two to four rounds of revisions, and each edit beyond this would have an additional cost.

A cap on edits helps streamline the review and feedback process and reduce costs while reducing the amount of back and forth during a design or branding project.

Here are a few ways to do it:

– During the discovery process, give your design team as much information about your company, likes, dislikes, etc., as possible.

– Gather, consolidate, and finalize the feedback from your team into one doc.

– Have one point of contact who is responsible for communicating with their project account manager.

– Be decisive and descriptive with your response as you review creative. (e.g., Instead of saying, “I don’t like these colors,” think about why something does or doesn’t work in the design: “The color combination in this logo doesn’t work because it looks similar to one of our indirect competitors.”)

Having a set number of revisions helps keep the project moving forward so you and your team can continue marketing the business without losing a step.

Provide high-quality assets to your creative team

Designers often request logos, photography, and other assets to produce ads and marketing campaigns. When the assets your company provides have issues, they can add unexpected fees because of the extra time involved in fixing them or rebuilding them entirely.

Let’s go over two of the most common issues that can occur with assets.

Blurry images
The lower the resolution of an image, the blurrier it is. Low-resolution images contain less detail, so they cannot be edited or resized without significantly reducing their quality.

Incorrect file formats
File type matters. For example, the best file types to reproduce logos for print are vector file formats such as .eps or .ai. They can be easily scaled up or down without deforming the logo. But if the logo is provided as a .png or .jpg file, it will be made up of pixels, which can degrade the image’s quality as it’s resized.

Giving your design team the raw asset files gives them more flexibility to correct the problems without spending more time reconstructing the files. And when in doubt, your designers can tell you exactly which formats would work best for your project.

Plan out your content in advance

Printed brochures, direct mail pieces, and newsletters are still used by businesses to promote their brands. Some of the most common ways to save money on printing include choosing lighter paper weights and cheaper finishes.

However, there’s one thing you have to do upfront to make the path from design to press straightforward: planning and organizing your content.

Knowing what copy and imagery you want to use in your printed pieces will help your designer and printer estimate design and production costs. This becomes especially important with larger documents like catalogs and brochures where deviating from an estimated page count can become prohibitively expensive.

Adhere to your design project schedule

During your initial conversations with your creative team, you’ll discuss specific milestones to meet and set expectations for the design project. Sticking to this project schedule is one of the easiest ways to prevent costs from ballooning.

But, when issues like delays in feedback or delivery of assets and eleventh-hour edits occur, this puts more pressure on the creative team to scramble at the last minute. In addition, it can also increase the number of people needed to meet the same milestones and deadlines if they remain unchanged.

The best way to mitigate this is by working closely with your project or account manager to communicate any red flags that could impact the timeline so your design team can form a new action plan.

Getting the most out of your design budget

Most businesses allocate a limited portion of their total marketing budget, meaning they have to make the most of those resources. When partnering with a creative team, they can guide you in the right direction so you can produce marketing materials while working within your budget.

Planning ahead can mitigate many of the most common issues impacting design projects. Knowing what you want, having the right assets, and communicating internally and externally will help you avoid headaches and sticker shock.