“Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process.” – Paul Rand
To DEVELOP is to render ideas, concepts, and plans into reality. It is to design and build, guided by your message, audience, and business goals. In this fourth step of ETSZONE’s Seven Step Process, we develop the digital assets and functionality to carry your message.
Overcome Challenges and Invent Solutions
View the creative ideas, outlines, and concepts created in the prior steps from the perspective of time, scope, and budget. This means applying ingenuity to overcome challenges and invent solutions. Use technical and creative skills to craft the user experience for the intended audience. Apply artistry. Make pragmatic choices to achieve the functional, aesthetic, project, and business goals.
Use New and Existing Tools
Have reliable platforms and tools ready at hand to achieve design goals efficiently and with impact. It is important to allow for the use or exploration of new or specialized tools, functions, and designs as well. Allowing for this supports the expression of unique value and differentiation by your business or organization.
Narrow Options
Narrowing development options and developing digital assets refines the creative process started in the prior step.
In this step, we narrow down the remaining options from the CREATE step by selecting, eliminating, or morphing concepts into one. Could we use any of the eliminated options elsewhere? Perhaps they could be used to enhance website functionality over time, to design email and ad campaigns, as themes for articles, or for other purposes.
Craft Digital Communication Strategy
An integral component of this step is to develop the specifics of your digital communication strategy. The strategy includes the road map of themes and topics for creating, publishing, and promoting content. The road map includes initial keywords or phrases to keep in mind for search engine optimization (SEO). The strategy also outlines performance metrics and indicators to be tracked and the management process for execution and review.
After the DEVELOP step, we are ready to go live with your strategy in Step 5, DEPLOY.
