A Checklist for Creative Projects
Story by
Jeffrey Kurtz
Foundations
Is this expertly executed?
Is foundational craftsmanship, such as grammar, production specs, and kerning, cared for?
Branding
Is the author (brand) obvious?
Are the tenants of your brand, like graphic guidelines, values, and voice, appropriately represented?
Efficiency
Are components distilled?
Have you rooted out superfluous elements, be it too much copy, too many colors, or needlessly heavy code?
Mood
How are you persuaded to feel?
What emotions are sparked and to what degree, including no spark at all?
Hierarchy
What do you see first and last?
Is the audience's attention being directed to the right information in the right order of importance?
Audience
Who is this for?
What are all the intended target audiences, including internal stakeholders, and what are their perspectives?
Messaging
What are you asking for?
What are the calls to action, how are they made, and how quickly are they understood?
Purpose
Why does this exist?
What needs are fulfilled for the customer, user, brand, community, and other relevant audiences?
A Checklist for Creative Projects
Collaborate Better:
Early in my
Better
Why Does This Checklist Exist?
What Will the Checklist Do For Me?
Collaborate
helping
by
themselves
help
designers
and
Marketers
each
Other.
How Should I Use This Checklist? And When?
A distilled framework for talking about creative projects.
Shorten your team's journey between understanding a problem and solving it.
To help bridge the communication gap between marketers and designers, I created this checklist.
The designers would then dream up an execution, make a mock-up or two, and send those back to the marketing team. Feedback would be shared, a revised mock-up would be made, and so on back and forth. All along the way, a lot of conversation was happening within each team but the communication between teams was more limited. It was also usually more calculated, formal, and fraught—sometimes, the mood reached straight-up distrust.
On the surface, it sort of looked like the two teams worked closely together tackling one project as a team. But from the inside, it felt much more like two conversations, with a project stuck in the middle. Usually, our creative process went something like this: marketing would hatch a campaign concept and toss it over the divide to the design team.
career as a designer I had an eye-opening realization: my success was dependent, at least partially, on the marketing team across the room. That also meant the success of those marketers was partially dependent on me, too. And I realized that even though we worked together frequently, the mood between teams didn't always reflect a cozy or constructive codependence.
This “language barrier” started to make the dynamic between teams feel less like we were partners-in-crime, and more like “Us vs. Them.” Because of that poor communication, expectations were lowered, results were muted, and potential was unmet.
Fostering better communication between marketing and design helps you nail project kick-offs, share your all-important project briefs with maximum clarity, and give helpful, actionable notes. Accomplishing those things will help establish a collaborative (not combative) tone across the team. And ultimately, the checklist is all about helping you achieve better results with less stress!
Using the checklist will help your team to shorten the journey from understanding a problem to solving it.
Simply hover over each of the key criteria on the checklist below for the critical question to ask yourself while discussing or reviewing creative work. If you need a bit more context for conversation, a click gives you further insight.
At your next kick-off or post-mortem be a team hero by bringing along this checklist and using it as a framework for conversation. Or when something is just not quite right about a project but you can't put your finger on it, use the checklist to walk yourself through the page and sift out what's wrong. Even consider using it to prepare next time you have to present a project to stakeholders.
I unveiled this checklist at the most recent , a gathering for members
of the Ceros community to get inspired, educated, and empowered. Check out the recap
and stay tuned for future sessions—either virtual or in a city near you!
Ceros Creators Club
here,
Ceros Creators Club
Can
Can