Interim Status Reports
Introduction
Although I did not originally set out to make new designs as a part of my personalized learning plan project, it was really hard for me to envision the rhetorical situation of the writing tasks I’d be taking on without revisiting the experience of a design process. Thus I do have some design work I’ve completed for the made-up client referred to in these artifacts. I will be publishing my deliverables separate from these initial correspondence artifacts, so that I have an opportunity to provide readers with a more focused artist statement reflecting on the design process.
For this exercise, I spent some time developing a wordmark logo for the made-up client. A wordmark logo is, not surprisingly, comprised of a word. Wordmark refers to the typographical element of the logo, which is at times the only element. Some examples of popular logos that are only words are Google and Coca-Cola. But often the wordmark will be paired with a pictorial mark, or logo symbol (Morr). Although I’d like to develop a logo symbol for this project in the future, I did not arrive at that step yet while exploring the design process as a supplement to my Personal Learning Plan project. Because of this, I address the pictorial logo figuratively in my practice correspondence as an element a teammate is responsible for developing.
If I were completing this independent work as a member of a creative team, I can understand how important it would be to participate in internal interim reports. In an agency, there would also be external interim reports involving the client to update them and garner feedback from them throughout the process. Although this responsibility would fall primarily on a project manager or creative director, for this PLP project I wanted to make at small effort to practice educating the client.
To preface the content of this report, I want to frame a factor acting on the rhetorical situation that arose while I was designing. After I designed the wordmark and saw it presented in context with the brand colors I had selected, my intuition told me that the color palette would not be successful in representing the brand personality for which I was aiming. It took a while to find a solution to this issue, but I’m happy with the result. This process created an opportunity to practice how I may describe a dramatic pivot in the style direction to the client. A significant adjustment like the one made with the brand colors could potentially sow seeds of doubt with the client, so it would be important to communicate the reasoning behind such decisions in a way that is understandable for someone without as much design knowledge, or, more specifically, in this instance, color theory.
My next PLP artifact will sample correspondence with a client to educate them briefly about color theory and pitch the new concept for their brand’s color palette. I will present this on my site as a memo, however, I strongly think that a conversation like this would be a verbal rather than a written one and would occur when meeting with the client to pitch your concepts as part of the revisions stage.
The following interim report documents I am sharing here are addressed to my figurative supervisor. In this internal correspondence, I refer to this need to educate the client about the color palette and offer to draft a document that reveals more details so that the supervisor would be able to translate this to the client. However, note that the actual artifact I present as part of the PLP will more closely resemble an external correspondence addressing the client rather than an internal correspondence addressing my creative director.
About My Interim Status Report
As I mentioned above, when working as part of a creative team carrying out some kind of production process, it is important that members remain in communication with one another to ensure that things are advancing as they should. Sometimes, in fact most times, things do not go as planned, so maintaining the appropriate degree of communication puts the team in a better position to problem solve successfully. This is also essential for managing relationships with clients or other departments with which the team is collaborating. Keeping external parties up to date when issues do arise helps to manage expectations and prevent misunderstandings or conflicts.
Dr. Andrus emphasized the importance of status reports as an element of project management and communication within a team, and suggested that I develop a template that would apply to a design project. I reflected on some of the research I’ve done regarding working for a creative agency in addition to the guidance Dr. Andrus offered and considered what kind of information should be included in an interim report.
I’ve consolidated the kinds of info that would be most relevant to include into the following list:
- Summary of project aims and objectives
- Synopsis of research findings
- List of completed tasks
- Give inventory or assessment of resources used
- In case of digital design projects, the biggest resource is labor, so for this you could report how many hours you’ve dedicated
- List of noncomplete tasks
- An article by University of South Hampton suggests to elaborate upon this, or to “demonstate the steps to complete the project on time”, which I interpret to mean to clarify what’s next
- Ask any unresolved questions
To practice reporting these details, I drafted a message for my figurative boss, but I also created a table to present the information more simply and to function as a template that can be reused for other projects. It seems to me that many design teams today use project management software that achieves the same results as the table I created. For example, one digital project management tool that I’ve explored in the past is a service called Asana. With this collaborative tool, the project tasks are positioned and displayed in the style of a Kanban board, which is a popular and visual system for organizing work. A Kanban board system is typically associated with Agile processes (Agile is a development methodology), and while some design teams operate more with a waterfall process (or even “scrum”), the Kanban system remains applicable and useful.
Without further ado, here are two examples of what an internal interim report for a design project may look like!
Sources:
How, Rachel. “How to collaborate with Product Managers as a Product Designer | UI/UX Design Tips”, YouTube, uploaded by Rachel How, 18 Jun 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFoUhEtDkmk&list=PLQZmpSSuIOjWhwQrFhupW5GrTeZuzcFN0&index=7
“Interim Reports.” English for Engineers, University of Southampton, https://www.southampton.ac.uk/englishforengineers/understanding_assessed_tasks/reports/interim_reports.page
Morr, Kelly. “Do You Know the 7 Different Types of Logos?” 99designs, Vista, 14 Feb. 2022, https://99designs.com/blog/tips/types-of-logos/
And, special thanks to Dr. Andrus!