I've been professionally designing marketing materials and content since 2022. I want to share a bit about my creative process and the thinking behind it.
If you'd like to see more variety of creatives and random things I've made, check out some of my Behance collections!
Designing is a form of problem-solving: whether you're creating an ad to boost sales, a poster to announce an event, stickers to promote your brand, or designing journal pages just to relax - there is always a reason and a meaning behind a design.
"Scanning" the brief before starting a project is not enough. As a designer, I believe there is so much more information to be gathered, explored and learned before starting to develop the first drafts.
Learning about the meanings and reasons (the why's) that led to the need of this design is an important step that will ultimately direct your search for inspiration and ideas, and shape the flow of the project. We shouldn't just focus on making pretty designs, but should take into account all the other players in the game - print shops, developers, ads managers, customers, etc.
By considering other roles and thinking outside of the box, we create functional, frustration-free designs.
Major focus in my design career so far have been social media ads. Ecommerce retailers rely on these to promote their brand and bring customers to their web shop.
In collaboration with marketing managers I design ad creatives for different funnels, purposes, products, and so on. Collaboration is important to understand the project, and later receive feedback in order to improve in weak areas.
When new creatives need to be made, I try to answer these questions first - Are we refreshing old creatives that performed well, or creating new ones to replace those that didn't? Who are we targeting with these ads? What do our customers seem to click on the most? Has our competition made anything similar?
When the project is set, it's time to gather all the materials needed to complete it! For me, this means pulling out old creatives that performed well, preparing product pictures that will be used, digging through platforms where competitors' ads can be found and getting inspired in Pinterest, Canva, etc.
What do I look for? Interesting ways discounts can be displayed, sale elements that catch my attentions as I scroll, engaging CTA's and copies that pique my interest.
Combining all the information and ideas gathered is the most fun part - this is where Figma gets messy and covered in lots of slightly different variations of an element or creative, until we reach "the one." I call this process cooking because there are so many potential ingredients in the bag, but not all need to be used for the soup to taste good; it's about the perfect combination and accenting the right flavors in the right way.
Sometimes the materials provided are not sufficient enough to reach a desired result. When adjusting ad creatives for different placements, you need to be mindful of the safe zone for the text, but also for your product picture, since you don't want it to be fully covered by copy another Meta-generated popups. I often use Photoshop AI feature to generate more background when working with the 9:16 format.
Don't underestimate good organization when designing (or doing anything else!) A clean page helps me present my solutions easier and makes it possible to go back to those solutions later on when I need to get inspired again. And since ecommerce is dynamic and can often be a little chaotic, it's good to know what has been used and what could be recycled or redesigned.
If you are sad and/or a bird, come hang on IG and make some unhinged art together!
