What Rushing Your Design Project Really Means

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If you don't plan to allow enough time for your project to be designed, printed and delivered, then you may still be able to have your project completed in time, but the design will have to be rushed.

This means that your designer will put aside other client's work and work late nights, even weekends, to get your project out - but at a price. And the price takes several forms other than just financial.

The cost of rushing your project includes:

- Skipping important parts of the design process: With less time there's often not enough time allowed for a designer to spend much time at all on a creative approach or concept for your project. There also may not be enough time for your designer to present a lot of concepts to you or to go through a lot of revisions. You'll also be rushed through the approval cycle - which means it's more likely that you might miss your deadline.

- Quality may suffer: With less time and more stress the finished product often won't be of as high a quality as it could be. In design this could mean poorly prepared files, the details of the design aren't always attended to, or that a website is coded poorly. None of this will greatly harm the effectiveness of a finished piece, but it's always nicer to have a beautiful, perfect finished piece than have one that's almost all the way there.

- Financial costs: Just like any other profession a designer will charge extra for the late nights and other sacrifices that a rush project requires. It's an industry standard to charge one and a half times the normal cost of a project to rush it.

- Not being able to ask your audience: I highly recommend that you run your desgns-in-progress past your best clients and your target audience. Doing this sort of mini focus-group will enable your clients to give you invaluable feedback on your designs, your text, and their impact on your potential clients. If your project is rushed, then there's often no time to run the design options by your clients to get their input - and you'll lose out on a valuable resource.

Lack of planning can cost you a lot extra. So I suggest allowing plenty of time to design well thought-out materials, at a leisurely pace. This will cost you less and will often produce a more effective design.