Design and illustration

What design coordination is

Design coordination is me briefing a designer or an illustrator on your behalf, running the review rounds, and handing you the finished artwork together with the files it was made from. You approve the words and the concepts, and never have to explain your business twice or learn what a bleed is.

It is not me doing the design. I do not draw, and a content manager who claims he does is selling you something thinner than a designer would. It is also not a rebrand: a logo, a colour palette and a set of brand rules is a different job with a different specialist, and this service assumes those already exist.

When you need one

The usual case is content that cannot be published as plain text. A process customers find confusing needs a diagram rather than four more paragraphs. A downloadable guide needs laying out as a document somebody would keep. A leaflet needs artworking to a printer's specification, which is a set of requirements most owners have never been shown.

You do not need this if the job is one image and you already have a designer you like; send them the copy and the dimensions yourself. And if the page really needs a photograph of the actual thing rather than an illustration of the idea, a shoot at your premises is the better spend. A drawing of a workshop never persuaded anybody as well as the workshop.

What goes in the brief

A designer works from a brief the way a joiner works from a drawing. A weak brief does not produce a slower job. It produces the wrong object, twice.

• The final copy. Signed off, in a document, before the designer opens anything. This is the step people skip and it is the expensive one. Given no words, a designer fills the layout with placeholder text of a convenient length, and the result looks excellent. Then the real heading turns out to be nine words rather than three, the caption you needed does not exist, and the layout everyone approved now fights the content it was built to carry.
• Where it will live. The page it sits on, the width it has, and what is above and below it. A diagram designed for a printed sheet rarely survives a narrow column on a phone.
• Format and specification. Dimensions and file types for the website; bleed, trim, colour space and resolution for the printer.
• What already exists. Logo files, typefaces and their licences, your colours, and any earlier artwork the new piece must sit beside without looking like a stranger.
• Review rounds and the deadline. Two rounds, dated, naming the people allowed to give notes. A brief that leaves this out ends in round six.

What you get

The artwork, in the formats the brief named. Web files sized for the pages they belong to, print files built to the printer's specification, and a flat proof of each so you can see what was approved.

The source files. The layered working files the artwork was actually made in, and the typefaces licensed for your use. This is the point most often missed and the one worth insisting on. Without them, a two-word change to a diagram in eighteen months means going back to the original designer on their terms, or paying somebody to redraw the whole thing from a flat image. Ownership of the finished work and delivery of the working files go into the contractor's agreement before a fee is agreed, not into a hopeful email afterwards.

The brief and the review record. Filed alongside the artwork, so the next piece in the family is briefed the same way and comes back looking related.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A twenty-person safety-training company in Alberta sells a permit-to-work course to industrial employers. Two things need design: a sixteen-page downloadable guide to the permit process, and five diagrams explaining the stages of a permit, one per course page.

The copy is written and signed off first, all sixteen pages of it, and only then does an illustrator receive the brief. The five diagrams are specified as one family: same line weight, same labelling, same two colours, each drawn to a fixed width and to stay readable on a phone. First concepts arrive in eight working days — one diagram fully drawn and the guide's first four pages laid out — so the direction is agreed while it is cheap to change. Round one notes come from three people and are consolidated into one list rather than six contradictory emails. Round two is corrections only. At handover the company holds the web files, a print-ready guide, the working files and the typeface licence, and the illustrator's invoice comes through me.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the piece is, who reads it, and whether it is a drawing job or a layout job. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. My coordination fee and the designer's fee, stated separately, with the number of review rounds it buys.
3. Copy first. The final words signed off. If they are not written yet, that is separate work, and it happens first.
4. The designer. One recommendation, with a reason and examples of their work, for you to approve.
5. Brief and first concepts. Five to ten working days, depending on how many pieces are in the family.
6. Two review rounds. Your notes collected into one list, checked against the brief, and passed on. A third is quoted before it happens.
7. Handover. Final artwork, source files and licences, in a folder you own.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, with my coordination fee stated separately from the designer's fee. What moves the number is how many pieces there are, whether they form one family or four unrelated jobs, and whether the work is illustration, drawn from nothing, or layout, which arranges what exists. Designer fees are passed through at the rate you approved, with no mark-up. The pricing page sets out the four ways of working; where design is a recurring need it sits inside the monthly arrangement.

What happens next

Artwork has to be placed once it exists, at the right size and in the right slot, which is CMS content entry. Every image then needs a written description for readers who cannot see it, which is alt text. And where the project also needs a photographer, a developer or a translator, one person managing all of them beats four separate relationships. This work stands on its own: artwork delivered, files handed across, nothing further assumed.