Actually, it's not right, at least not completely right. The quality and effect of the final design of the brochure do not depend entirely on the design company. Let me quantify it boldly. I think a successful design works, customers account for 50%, designers account for 50%. So how can we do a good job in our company's brochure or album? With my years of design experience in design companies (focusing on album design, album design and visual book binding design), I am one of the few companies specializing in album design in China, and a brand design agency with considerable design strength in the field of album design. ), I think customers must do two things well: choose a really suitable design company honestly and rationally. To make a high-quality enterprise picture book, they must choose a high-level design company. As far as I know, more than 90% of customers are highly cautious when choosing design companies, and often choose three to five or even more than a dozen design companies through friends, networks and other channels for comparison, including comparing prices and strength. In measuring the design strength, they often choose to let the design company conduct competitive exhibition (the competitive exhibition here is a highly irregular bidding, with no bidding fee and no public information, etc.). ), and many design companies are forced by market competition. In my many years of working in the album design company, we meet many customers who choose to cooperate with us because they can't cooperate with other design companies almost every year. In the in-depth communication with them, I learned two important messages: 1. The design company that can't cooperate with them was selected through competitive demonstration. They found that the company's design in the competitive demonstration was acceptable, but after the formal cooperation, they really felt more and more wrong, so that they could not continue to cooperate. Having said that, we have to ask a question: Is this irregular competitive exhibition the best way to choose a design company? The answer is obviously not. So, how do customers choose the design company that really suits them? I think rational evaluation, sincere choice and follow-up guarantee are the best ways to choose your own partners (I'm talking about small design sheets for designing albums and brochures, and it's impossible to conduct proper bidding). Before explaining this problem, let's analyze why it is impossible to choose a suitable design company for irregular competitive exhibition. Let's take a look at the current situation of the so-called irregular competitive presentation. Non-standard competition shows a simple understanding of the customer's design needs, and then several design companies start to make design plans, and finally the customers choose them. In this process, there is no competitive exhibition fee, the information is completely closed, there are no terms and regulations, and the choice depends entirely on the personal preferences of the customer decision makers. Let's not talk about the aesthetic quality of customers here. In fact, the design companies participating in PK are facing numerous dangers of being defeated regardless of their strength. For example, the customer's internal plan changes, the brochure design is temporarily stopped, or the customer's internal staff or even the boss introduces the design of a friend's design company. Then, those companies that have worked hard to participate in the bidding will only get one sentence: we don't like it, or it is not suitable for us. Sending you away easily, even more immoral enterprises will ask you to leave the design scheme, saying that it is for their responsible person to review, but in fact it is to give your scheme to their friends for reference and reference. Because of this, design companies that have been deceived by customers are constantly rethinking and summarizing. Powerful design companies have begun to clearly put forward solutions, oppose any form of competitive presentation and bidding, and deal with boring and unreasonable customers with a positive and tough attitude (the design company where the author works and the visual professional album design company resolutely oppose irregular competitive presentation). Of course, some small design companies have to face this disorderly and helpless competition under the pressure of business. Of course, after many times of such "baptism", they summed up a set of "non-standard design" strategies to deal with "non-standard competitive display" and upgraded excellent design works to templates. In the face of such competitive display, they chose several sets of templates from their own accumulation and put them on directly. They easily "designed" a set or even several sets of beautiful-looking designs in a short time, with various styles, so that they didn't win the bid. Having said that, I think the above questions should be clear. Therefore, if an enterprise really wants to improve the quality of brochures, it must choose an ideal design company, and to choose an ideal design company, I think an enterprise must do: rational evaluation, sincere selection, and subsequent rational evaluation. In fact, it is not difficult to choose a design company that suits you in the early stage, and it does not need to be so complicated. The best way is to carefully read the works and cases of existing design companies, carefully analyze the customers who have served, and seriously communicate with designers. Works reflect the design level and style, customers reflect the strength and service of the company, and communication reflects the service quality and understanding of the project. A truly powerful design company can be reflected in these aspects. If you can't see the strength of the design company from these aspects, can you see it from several sets of plans made by this simple competitive demonstration? This is a bit self-deception. Of course, if you are not at ease, you can go to the design company for a field trip. So far, I think it's time to make a rational judgment. Sincerely choose once you choose a company, I suggest you give full trust, sign a standard contract with the design company and pay the advance payment according to the contract. This kind of trust is of great benefit to you, so that the design company can go all out to make the design scheme according to the standard process, instead of taking a chance with the "airplane draft", and the quality of the design scheme is obviously different. Follow-up guarantee Many customers may have a concern. What if my judgment is wrong, or the design company is successful in providing other customer services, but it doesn't work for us or is "not to my boss's taste"? What should I do? First of all, I think as long as a design team is serving the company, there will be no good situation of changing the project. If this happens, it must be a communication problem (communication problems will be discussed later). Of course, if you are still worried, I suggest you stipulate in the contract that if the design is not satisfactory, you can terminate the contract. Of course, the specific terms can be negotiated with the design company. Many people may not understand the difference between this and competitive demonstration, but it is very different. Whether it is a design company or a customer, it is of great benefit, so I won't elaborate here. Respect the profession and regard the design company as a partner. Can you make a good corporate picture book by choosing a design company that suits you? Obviously not. Choosing a good design company is only a prerequisite for doing a good job in corporate picture books. In order to successfully complete the design of enterprise picture books, I think enterprises should also pay attention to the following three aspects in the specific design process: straighten their positions and communicate with design companies on an equal footing. In the process of cooperation with design companies, many customers often take the attitude of "customer" over designers, unable or unwilling to form good communication with designers, and just blindly ask design companies to come up with design plans and then lightly deny them, while design companies can only passively and numbly guess customers' preferences, thus terminating cooperation or eventually due to time reasons. In fact, when the cooperative relationship between enterprises and customers is determined, establishing healthy and good communication is the key to do a good job in enterprise album design. Designers need to carefully understand the corporate culture, corporate design requirements, industry background, competitors and customers' preferences for design style, and more importantly, the characteristics of customers' customers and so on. The designer's design concept needs to be well communicated to the enterprise, and only through mutual communication can the ideal scheme be finally formed. Enterprises should clarify a relationship. Designers are helping enterprises solve problems and serve enterprises. Of course, this kind of service is paid, but the normal cooperative relationship cannot be changed because of the payment, which leads to the unsatisfactory design effect, and the ultimate loss is the enterprise itself. Determine the design orientation from the company culture (or product characteristics) and customer needs. Many customers design their own brochures and ask the design company according to their own personal preferences. Here is a more professional question. Corporate brochure and picture books are not for enterprises, but a means of communication to promote their own enterprises and products. Since the purpose is promotion, I suggest that enterprises communicate with designers carefully before the design company starts to formally design the scheme, and make clear the target readers of the brochure, that is, the characteristics and needs of customers. Therefore, what corporate brochure really wants to cater to is customers' customers, and it doesn't matter whether enterprises like it or not. Therefore, it is the most important and extreme to combine the enterprise's own culture (or product characteristics) with the needs of customers and finally achieve the purpose of promoting enterprise products. Of course, if the above conditions are met, it can also meet the enterprise itself, which is undoubtedly perfect. Improve their own aesthetic quality and supervise the design quality. Of course, I think the excellent design scheme is produced under the quality supervision of the enterprise. It is emphasized that enterprises and designers must communicate well, fully respect their specialties and listen carefully to the professional opinions of designers. Instead of directly adopting all designers' schemes, on the one hand, designers' schemes are not necessarily perfect, and the most important thing is that designers do not necessarily understand the culture of enterprises and the needs of customers very accurately. Therefore, only by constant running-in, collision and disagreement can an ideal scheme be formed. However, due to the aesthetic restrictions of many customers, designers' original excellent schemes are often "supervised". This is a pity, so it is very important for customers to improve their aesthetic quality. Therefore, customers' own decisions often play a decisive role in designing their own brochures. Only by choosing the right design company, making full use of the professional advantages of the design company and communicating on an equal footing can we achieve the expected results.