Design with a Goal in Mind
Any experienced designer will tell you there’s nothing worse than a project without goals. It’s like trying to paint the entire expanse of the night sky. What part of it do you paint? As creative professionals, you like lots of room to be creative, but without clearly defined limits, there’s really not a problem to solve.
All successful and innovative template design is created in conjunction with a clearly defined set of objectives. No template project can begin without first defining its design and workflow requirements. After the specifications have been defined, the overall template design process will go smoothly—without wasting valuable time and money.
Consider a template that has been thrown together with little thought. No doubt there will missing elements, because there wasn’t clear direction from the beginning. The wrong tool will probably be used in a particular solution, because the workflow requirements were not previously clarified. Most of all, the template will be poorly organized, harder to implement, and almost impossible to manage. You’ll be left with a template that isn’t fully functional and involves a lot of production time—defeating the very purpose of the template.