I had mentioned in my last post that I’ve been experimenting with the idea of a sort of “concept budget,” that I started thinking about while I was working on a budget for my financial expenses. The idea of having a budget is to set limits to your spending and to understand where and how you are spending your money.

For example, if I have written in my budget that I plan on spending $xxx a month going out to eat, I can only spend $xxx a month going out to eat. As soon as I reach that $xxx limit, I don’t allow myself to go out again until the next month, when the numbers reset. As I spend money during the month, I place all of these expenses into categories so that at the end of the month I will be able to see where my money goes, and justify my spending. The concept budget works in a very similar fashion, and I’ve found that categorizing what I’m doing helps me to justify my decisions while I’m working.

Instead of starting with a set amount of money and dividing it into categories, the creative budget uses a creative brief to find out what is wanted/needed in the final deliverables and lists the main objectives as categories. At this stage, it’s important to ask questions and make sure you understand the client’s needs and vision.

Learn as much as you can about the client, their competition, how the deliverables will be used (print, on screen, sizes, etc.), feelings and ideas the client wants conveyed, other sources of inspiration and any other information that you can think of to better understand the project.

Now that you have this list, you should be able to fit every design decision you make into one of these categories. By having to justify each decision by making sure it fits into a category, you can eliminate useless fluff or “just to make it look pretty” decisions. Obviously, your design should look good, but you should be able to explain the reasoning behind the look and feel of your design and how it relates to the client’s vision.

As I’ve previously stated, I’m still experimenting with this method, but by writing down why I’m making my decisions as I’m working, I’m able to use these lists as a starting point for writing out a more formal explanation to give to the client with the deliverables, and I’m doing less “because it looks pretty” work and more “because it promotes your vision and this is why” work.