You receive the design problem, first of all.
Research
Ask a few questions to define the problem and establish your objective:
- Who is the audience? Does it have any special interests? What are its demographics?
- Are there any limits or constraints on the format, time, or budget?
- What kinds of solutions have other designers found for the same sort of problem?
Sketch
Generate as many ideas as possible through thumbnail sketches (small, quick, exploratory sketches). These don’t need to be fancy or refined—you just need to get as many ideas out on paper as possible. You should try to make sure they are legible to other people.
Be sure to give this step its due—a lot of people skimp on it and they end up making weaker work.
Once you have a lot of ideas, analyze them in terms of the project objectives.
Development
Take 2 or 3 of the best thumbnails and develop them into roughs. A rough is a half-size or full-size version of an original thumbnail, with an eye toward refining the layout, typography, placement, and overall concept.
These roughs should be developed further into comps (or comprehensives, the artwork presented to the client). These should have a high degree of polish, you want to present the very best to the client. For students, this is usually the the last step. For professional designers, the process goes on.
Finalization
The designer has to prepare the files for production: this means the files have to be prepped for printing.
