Professional Design Practice :: Lesson 3 :: Project Planning

Originally published 2014. Updated March 2026.

By running your business along well-oiled, well-organised lines you’ll be able to wring the most amount of time out of your days, maximise your profits, avoid mislaying things and generally inject some calm into your busy life. A modicum of planning, far from acting as a restraint on creativity, can in fact free us to spend more time on the creative process. Follow the guides below, or a life of professional chaos awaits.

This is Lesson 3 in our Professional Design Practice series. You might also want to read Lesson 2 on fee structures and quoting and Lesson 4 on dealing with clients.

Project Planning

First Things First

To begin with, you’ll need a system for booking jobs in and allocating project codes or numbers to them as they arrive. Call this “Processing”. Designing a system for these codes can be entirely your own decision — the only rule being that once you’ve devised it, keep things consistent across all projects.

You might take the first three letters of your client’s name, add a numeral indicating which project this is for that client, then append the year and month the job was booked.

Create a folder with subfolders on your hard drive, named after your client. Mirror this structure in your email account. As correspondence and attachments flow back and forth, you’ll be able to archive messages and files in an organised manner.

Job bags remain useful for storing physical material relating to projects. Plastic A3 folders work well. Attach a label with the client name and project number, and affix it consistently to each bag.

Planning Jobs & Projects

Planning is a set of systems and methods. Good planning is purposeful and clear-sighted, effective and efficient. It helps avoid mistakes.

Download a free PDF template you can print out or save and fill in for each of your projects, download HERE. (Note: this S3 download will be restored shortly.)

Modern digital tools can complement or replace a paper-based plan. Notion, Asana, and Trello all offer project templates suited to creative workflows — boards for tracking stages, due dates for milestones, and comment threads that keep client communication in one place. The tool matters less than the habit. Use whatever you’ll actually keep up to date.

Important Planning Questions

• What am I trying to do? (Aim)
• What is important? (Criteria)
• How do I best go about achieving the aim within the given conditions? (Working method)
• When do I start? (Deadlines and time)

Aims

As it states in The Little Know-It-All: “Aims are a decision-maker’s guidelines and signposts.” Without setting your aims, how can you expect to attain them? There’s a useful mnemonic which psychotherapists and life coaches use when explaining aims: SMART. Aims should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based.

Put them down in writing. Once written down, aims take on a concrete life and become commitments. Review them periodically and amend wherever appropriate.

Every project you embark on will need some kind of plan, broken down into a list of jobs based on priority. The most important jobs should be tackled first, and anything that can be done in under three minutes should be attended to immediately.

Top Tips for Effective Job Planning

• Self-discipline will be required
• Little jobs needing less than three minutes should be done at once
• Larger jobs should be broken down into several steps
• Check the job list once a week
• Set up a calendar
• Keep a deadline reminder within your calendar

A reminder system is worth building into your project plan. Without writing things down, small jobs can fester in the mind, build up until they seem insurmountable, and stress you out. Even if you haven’t forgotten anything, you may convince yourself that you have — simply by not recording things.

From The Little Know-It-All: “Self-discipline means being able to overcome our innate laziness and inertia, and to carry out even unpleasant tasks in order to achieve more in the end.” There exists a theory called ‘The 80:20 Principle’ which states that for many people, 80 per cent of our time is spent on unproductive activities, and that 20 per cent of our most productive time leads to 80 per cent of our success.

Time Management

“Time is money.” It’s a phrase that holds water — the more time we squander on useless activities, the longer the period in which the money we’re earning is made. Set overall and milestone deadlines for each job within your project, and stick to them.

It may help to keep this overall concept of your projects in mind: a project is an undertaking with a delineated beginning and end, in terms of deliveries and timescales involved. They’ll vary in complexity, but all projects involve stages and sub-projects within the larger whole — and each needs its own planned timeline and defined aim.

The Four Prime Components of Planning

• Evaluation: What are the challenges here and what needs to be done?
• Planning: How do I deal with the challenges?
• Execution: What will my solution look like?
• Observation: How do I check the outcome?

Without adequate planning, projects can quickly fail. Deadlines get missed, milestones forgotten, things mislaid. You can find yourself on the back foot, playing catch-up because of your own inadequate planning.

Projects Usually Succeed If…

• Everybody involved has the same clearly defined aims and outcomes in mind
• The project is adequately planned, above all to prevent false starts and having to repeat individual steps
• The work is carefully timetabled and monitored to ensure the project can be concluded
• There are open channels of communication at all levels
• You have emergency plans to fall back on if events do not run as planned

Further Rules of the Planning Process

• Plan ahead
• Consider contingencies and emergency options
• Break projects down into manageable milestones
• Make a list of resources needed
• Draw up a project budget

Execution

• Review project aims
• Stay motivated and enthusiastic
• Complete the project

Monitoring

• Constantly monitor your daily activities and workflow
• Keep an eye on timeframes and progress
• Do the same for events
• Jot down any outcomes, both foreseen and unforeseen

Adaptation

• Solve problems as they occur
• Keep plans supple and amend if necessary
• Take emergency steps if need be
• Conclude the project on time

The Project Plan

The project plan is a detailed description of what is required of each project, and is made up of some or all of the following parts:

1. Project Definition

• A description of the tasks to be carried out
• Project resources needed
• Stated project aims
• Project outcome
• Projected project outcomes

2. Project Variables

• Jobs to be executed
• Project start date
• Predicted project duration
• Predicted end date

3. List of Milestones and Jobs to be Done

• Responsibilities (if working in a team)
• Jobs
• Predicted outcomes
• Planned start date
• Planned end date
• Actual start date
• Actual end date

4. Project Budgets

• Actual project budget
• Projected budget (if different)
• Any other expenses
• Unforeseen costs

5. Supplementary Plans

• “B” plan
• Emergency plans

6. Project Approval

Case Study: CFTC Experts Brochure

Client: Commonwealth Secretariat

Designer: Poonum Chauhan

Design Agency: The Fink Agency LLP

I recently caught up with Poonum Chauhan, a senior designer at The Fink Agency in London, to ask her about any projects where good project planning had been essential. Her words on a particularly devilish project, in terms of logistics and planning, are given below.

This project was quite a large one with a lot of different elements involved, and which all had to be pieced together to produce a highly professional document.

With countries involved from the entire Commonwealth, and individual experts from these countries each writing profiles, the planning, collation and timing of this project needed to be highly organised and efficient — which, as we discovered, didn’t always turn out to be the case. Time zones, work trips, meetings abroad and the general hierarchy of the organisation all proved challenging, along with budgets too.

Also, the print was given away, so liaising with the Commonwealth’s printers to ensure the job came out how we wanted it was imperative. A 152pp, 210x210mm brochure, with a throw-out cover, and a 6 colour job were all things to take into consideration. Having to think about courier costs around the world, we had to drop our original case-bound idea as production and postage costs would’ve been just too high.

Summary

In The Professional Practice of Design, Dorothy Goslett writes: “Many designers, though admitting its necessity, think that design administration is boring, a tiresome chore always to be put aside for doing second if something more exciting crops up to be done first. But good design + good administration = good fees well earned.”

If you don’t pay enough attention to it already, get involved in project planning and administration. The routines will soon become habitual and the benefits will reveal themselves to be substantial. What designer — or client — doesn’t want their project finished on time and within budget?

Continue the series: Lesson 4 — Dealing with Clients | Lesson 5 — Invoicing Clients | Lesson 7 — Graphic Design Contracts

Want to put these skills into practice? Our Certificate IV in Graphic Design covers professional practice from brief to billing — everything you need to work confidently as a freelance or studio designer.

References

A chapter on project planning in the excellent The Little Know-It-All, Common Sense for Designers, which I recommend to you all.