Whether you’re managing multiple clients or designing for one brand, a structured graphic design process allows you to match creativity with efficiency. When your team has a systematic, repeatable process, you’ll notice better consistency and faster approvals.
So how do structured workflows improve creativity rather than limit it? Our creative design framework expert, Alex Stewart, says, “Structure removes chaos from your graphic design workflow. Design iteration at scale becomes possible. When designers are not guessing about expectations, chasing files, or dealing with vague feedback, they have more mental space to create. The workflow protects creativity instead of blocking it.”
Without one, you'll be winging projects and crossing your fingers, saying, "This time it will go better."
The good news? A solid graphic design process is easy to set up. Even better? We've done all the hard work for you.
Follow along and copy the seven steps below that we've used with our design service for thousands of designs without fail.
Quick Links
What is a graphic design process?
Why a graphic design process matters
The 7-step graphic design process
The basic principles of graphic design
What is a Graphic Design Process?
A graphic design process is a structured approach that graphic designers follow to create designs in a low-friction way. Typically, it will include a series of steps from design conception to final delivery, aimed at producing effective and aesthetically pleasing designs at scale.
While the specific stages may vary depending on the project and designer, a graphic design process usually includes steps such as research, brainstorming, sketching, conceptualization, design iteration, feedback, refinement, and final delivery.
One of the biggest decisions you’ll make when mapping out your design project lifecycle is whether to hire a freelancer or an agency. Some freelancers move through projects quickly. However, the feedback and revision process can be a bit rocky, especially if they are eager to move on to their next client.
Agencies should present graphic design stages explained clearly. They should offer defined expectations and consistent communication. The result? A repeatable process and high-quality graphic design deliverables.
Why a Graphic Design Process Matters?
A graphic design process can make or break a graphic designer's ability to produce impactful design at scale. Let's say you're creating a singular logo design for your brand with no plans for further designs after. Who knows, this might be the only design you take care of all year! In this situation, you might think a graphic design process is a bit overkill, and we don't blame you.
But let's switch it up a little. Imagine today you'll need to create three different designs for three different brands. There are multiple stakeholders and needs involved, along with some tight deadlines. Can you see how having a reliable and repeatable process might help the latter situation not become a gigantic mess?
When you have a solid graphic design process, you can promote:
- Clarity: Your team will know what is expected of them and can work toward common goals
- Consistency: Deliverables will fit your standards and promote continuity with past work
- Scalability: Your staff can get more done without cutting corners in terms of quality
- Innovation: Giving your team a clear set of guardrails creates a space for creativity and boldness
Let's dive into three more reasons why a graphic design process is necessary in most graphic design situations:
Consistency: Keeps visuals and brand elements aligned
With a proper process in place, you'll be communicating effectively across the entire design process. A graphic design won't make it to the final design stage without having been looked at a few times by those involved. Plus, with everything clearly communicated, graphic designers will know what success looks like from the get-go.
Think about it. Have you ever had a tough time completing a project when you didn't know what “done” or “success” looked like? Completely normal. This addresses that common headache head-on.
Efficiency: Reduces miscommunication and rework
Alignment in any business setting is crucial for success. We as humans love to be complicated, and without proper guardrails in place, we do a fantastic job at it. By following a creative design process, the guardrails are put in place for you. There isn't any room for a he-said-she-said debate, as everything has already been decided and agreed upon at every step along the way.
Quality: Helps meet design goals with fewer revisions
If you're in the design business, you probably aren't completing projects whenever you feel like it between coffees. In the world of marketing design, teams need to move fast. Needs are always changing, and CEOs are always losing their mind about the latest trends they need to take advantage of.
The 7-Step Graphic Design Process
Tired of design ideas turning into design messes? Consider these 7 steps in the graphic design process and forget about stressful nights on your Adobe Creative Cloud programs:
1. Define objectives and goals
2. Start your creative brief
3. Conduct the research phase
4. Brainstorm and concept development
5. Design iteration and refinement
6. Reviews and approval
7. Finalize and deliver the design assets
1. Define Objectives and Goals
Always a great starting point, first ensure you have objectives and goals defined. This will make the remaining steps easier and give everyone involved a better understanding of what a successful design should look like.
Here’s a simple graphic design checklist you can use:
- Who is your target audience?
- What’s the purpose of the design?
- Does the brand tone and messaging align?
- What are the most important design project milestones and deliverables?
Every graphic design project has been created for a reason. To ensure a smooth design process, make sure that reason is well-communicated and well-known to all stakeholders. The last thing you want is to find out someone has a different definition of success while the design is in its final stages.
When asked, “How specific should goals be before briefing a design team?” Alex said, "Specific enough that the designer knows what success looks like, but not so rigid that it kills exploration.”
2. Start Your Creative Brief
Use the objectives and goals you set out in step one to put together a creative brief. The creative brief is the foundation and rough framework that a successful final design relies on.
Your creative brief should be robust, detailed, and have all the information a graphic designer would need to achieve the vision.
The creative brief must include these elements:
- Design research process
- Company or client background
- Brand assets
- Project goals
- Essential deliverables
- Insights about your audience
- A timeline with specific deadlines
Your brief could include:
- A process for delivering graphic design feedback
- Examples from competitors
- Inspiration moodboards
- Notes on voice and tone
- Prior campaign references
We know this can be a lot, so we created the Ultimate Creative Brief Playbook, which includes a free downloadable template for you to pass around to your team and use. If things still get a little too complicated, we recommend using a tool like Loom to support the creative brief with a video and screen recording.
3. Research and Discovery
Research the topic, target audience, competitors, and design trends. Collect all necessary materials such as images, text, and brand guidelines.
The creative design brief that you developed in Step Two will provide a solid foundation for you to conduct your market research. Consider what the competitor designs look like. Are they pushing the bounds of anything that you can take inspiration from?
It's good practice to put yourself in the shoes of the target audience. What sort of content would you engage with on social media and other channels if you belonged to that group? What would you resonate with?
Overall, this step in the graphic design process is a perfect opportunity to get everything on the table to support the next step: The initial concept, development, and brainstorming process.
Here’s a closer look at where to focus your efforts:
Competitor and trend research
Evaluate what your competitors are producing and what’s performing well in the market. While you should use your findings as inspiration, you also need to differentiate your design. Both of these steps will help you establish a clear direction for your project.
Audience insights and visual tone
Identify what your audience responds to, including colors, imagery, and layout styles. Document these preferences before concepting begins.
Create a moodboard
Moodboards help you gather inspiration and speed up early decisions. Tools like Figma, Pinterest, and Milanote support collaborative moodboarding that keeps everyone on the same page.
4. Brainstorm and Concept Development
Here’s where creative exploration and early visualization of potential directions happen. The goal is to quickly generate concepts, evaluate them, and move forward with confidence.
Before you go any further in the graphic design process, you need the graphic designer to brainstorm and present various ideas and options to see if anything clicks. Performing this step can save time, as this can usually be decided now and not two steps down the road.
Providing rough options will also give the customer various directions to choose from. We as people naturally feel more comfortable with choice. By getting various design ideas out in the open, the choice left to client feedback before continuing further and risking wasted time.
Our expert, Alex, was asked, “What’s one effective way to evaluate which design concept to develop further?” He said, “Look for momentum. The best concept is the one that unlocks more ideas, aligns naturally with the brand, and gets the team leaning in. It is less about voting and more about which direction creates compounding clarity.”
Creative sprint
Brainstorm in short rounds to create a sense of urgency and keep your team focused. The timebox method prevents overthinking and produces more directions to consider. Sprints should last around 30 minutes to push rapid idea generation.
Many teams are turning to AI to accelerate ideation during sprints. While this can speed up sketching or mood exploration, you must use AI appropriately. That means treating it as a supportive tool, not a substitute for your creative judgment.
5. Design Iteration and Refinement
Now that the whole design thinking process is underway, you'll need to make sure you're checking in at the proper times while setting milestones that make it easy to do so. While the brainstorming process serves as the first milestone, you'll want to check in on the design at the halfway mark. Here’s what to check:
- Typography and spacing
- Visual hierarchy
- Color and contrast accessibility
- Brand consistency across all assets
Use the 10/50/99 method to structure your design iteration. This means delivering feedback on high-level concepts at the 10% mark, addressing core structural elements at the 50% point, and focusing on final details and polish at the 99% mark. This way, you aren’t addressing fundamental elements late in the process and can instead focus on making timing-appropriate changes.
The halfway mark throws all the design direction debates out the window and leaves you focused on the direction at hand. Think back to the direction you decided on; is that vision being achieved? If not, get back to the drawing board and find another way to approach things. Keep iterating and refining until the design is where it needs to be.
The last stop for refinement and iterations is at the 99% mark. This is where the final tweaks are made, and where you can guarantee all the basic graphic design principles are applied. If all else fails, use our handy graphic design principles list at the bottom of this article as a checklist for final delivery.
6. Reviews and Approval
This stage is all about managing graphic design feedback effectively. Maintain clear communication to prevent bottlenecks and avoid prolonged revision periods that could lead to missed deadlines. Make sure that everyone involved understands the goals, constraints, and reasoning behind major decisions.
Here’s how to collect and organize feedback:
- Use screen-recorded walkthroughs so you can demonstrate what elements you are addressing
- Encourage stakeholders to leave Figma comments and annotations
- Track versions with shared Google Sheets
- Adopt a centralized feedback channel
Be wary of endless loops where your team is making minor changes in each round. Agree on limits for revisions and set firm approval milestones to avoid muddying the waters.
7. Final Delivery and Handoff
With client approval from all stakeholders, it's time to finalize the design and deliver the final product. Note the formats from the creative brief that were asked to be included. Export the design in those formats, name the files something easy to organize, and send it off.
Here’s a delivery checklist to set you up for a smooth handoff:
- Choose an approved format, such as AI, PSD, PDF, or PNG
- Export sizes and ratios
- Use an organized folder structure
- Name each version clearly to ensure the correct one is sent
- Include licensing or font usage notes
Teamtown’s system automatically organizes all files into labeled folders with clear versioning, ensuring that nothing goes missing later. This helps your team keep track of every iteration and final asset without manual cleanup.
Congratulations, you've just completed a design in the most organized and repeatable way possible using the graphic design process!
The Basic Principles of Graphic Design
Most good design practice comes down to a few basic principles. A framework alone won't create a show-stopping design, but when combined with basic principles, you'll save loads of time on revisions and iterations.
Balance
Balance in graphic design refers to the distribution of visual weight within a composition. It creates a sense of equilibrium, making the design feel stable and aesthetic. The key is to ensure that no single part of the design overpowers the others, leading to a unified and harmonious outcome.
Contrast
Contrast is a powerful principle that involves placing opposing elements next to each other to highlight their differences.
Effective use of contrast can make certain aspects of the design stand out, draw attention to key elements, and enhance the overall readability of the content.
Alignment
Alignment brings order to a design by lining up elements systematically. Each element should have a visual connection with another, creating a clean, organized look.
Proximity
Proximity involves grouping related items and creating associations between them. This principle helps organize information, improves readability, and guides the viewer's eye through the design.
Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is about arranging elements of visual representation in a way that signifies their importance, guiding the viewer's attention to the most critical information first. Using size, color, contrast, and spacing, designers can create a clear visual order, leading the viewer's eye through the design in a predetermined sequence.bout arranging elements of visual representation in a way that signifies their importance, guiding the viewer's attention to the most critical information first. Using size, color, contrast, and spacing, designers can create a clear visual order, leading the viewer's eye through the design in a predetermined sequence. Hierarchy is crucial in all types of design work, from posters to websites, ensuring that the message is received in the intended order of importance.
Typography
Typography involves choosing typefaces, adjusting font sizes, and spacing letters and lines to enhance the reading experience. By carefully selecting and applying appropriate fonts, designers can convey mood, reinforce the message, and ensure that their work leaves a lasting impression.
Color
Using color in your design allows you to add emphasis and mood where it's beneficial to the intention of the design. From warm tones to cool hues, designers strategically leverage color to create visual interest, convey brand identity, and send the intended message to their target audiences.
Repetition
Repetition in graphic design is a powerful tool used to establish consistency, rhythm, and unity within a composition. Repetition helps to guide the viewer's eye, establish visual patterns, and strengthen the overall message of the design.
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How to Give and Receive Design Feedback
Structured feedback turns subjective opinions into directions you can act on. When clients and designers follow clear communication principles, the feedback and revision process becomes faster, cleaner, and more collaborative.
Here are some dos and don’ts to follow when delivering feedback.
Dos:
- Do explain the why behind your comments
- Do reference goals or strategy, not personal preferences
- Do consolidate feedback across stakeholders
- Do provide examples when suggesting changes
Don’ts:
- Don’t use vague phrases, like “make it pop”
- Don’t introduce new goals mid-project
- Don’t compare unrelated visuals without context
- Don’t give conflicting feedback
These dos and don’ts will help you create a more actionable feedback workflow that keeps your project on time and within budget.
Bringing it all Together: Process, Principles and Feedback
A strong graphic design workflow combines these steps and fundamental concepts into an actionable strategy. When your team understands the project lifecycle, they collaborate more effectively and avoid unnecessary delays.
Remember, great design isn’t luck; it’s a repeatable, collaborative system built on sound processes and the right workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are the steps of the graphic design process?
The seven graphic design process steps are: defining objectives and goals, starting a creative brief, conducting research, brainstorming and concept development, design iteration and refinement, reviews and approval, and the delivery of the finalized design assets.
What is process in graphic design?
In graphic design, a process is the structured approach that designers take to create visual solutions, involving steps from initial conception to final delivery. It includes stages such as research, brainstorming, design iteration, feedback, and refinement, ensuring that designs effectively communicate the intended message to the audience.
How long does a full design project usually take?
A typical project takes three to ten days, depending on how elaborate it is and the number of deliverables involved. The complexity of revisions and the capabilities of your team also have a huge impact on the delivery timeline.
How many rounds of revisions are standard?
Most teams allow two to three rounds of revisions. Using a structured workflow and setting a cap on revisions helps keep your project from getting stuck in endless revision loops.
How can agencies or brands streamline their design process?
Adopting a defined design project lifecycle and centralizing feedback tools will reduce the risk of bottlenecks and improve speed.
