How to Plan and Execute a Successful Redesign Project

As designers we all know that empty feeling of staring at a blank document—not knowing exactly where to begin, but keenly aware of the workload and looming deadline. Now imagine that your project is to complete a massive redesign of not one but six related digital magazines, plus a comprehensive style guide, all within six months. Once the adrenaline-­rush of panic subsides, you’re left with one thought: “Can I really do this?” I’m here to tell you: Yes, you can.

Sometimes, taking the lead on a redesign is placed in your lap by a manager or executive; other times, you’re the one (perhaps the only one) who realizes it’s time for a redesign and need to take initiative to get the ball rolling. 

My recent experience redesigning a suite of six data-driven, food-trend-focused magazines was a combination of both scenarios. I demonstrated to my manager the potential value of switching from using PowerPoint to InDesign to create our magazines, and when he saw how it would streamline our processes and give us more creative freedom, the decision was made to refresh the magazines’ looks as well. Ultimately, I was chosen to take the lead because I was the only one on my three-person team with a background in graphic design and was the most proficient in the tool.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, there’s likely a reason that you were selected to lead the charge of a redesign, and not someone else. Even though the task is daunting, if you plan ahead, you won’t flounder. So banish self-doubt, and get ready to establish some clear expectations, goals, and timelines. Let’s do this!

The TrendSpotting magazine covers prior to the redesign

Set the Stage

The first step after taking on a lead role in a redesign is to establish realistic expectations. If you over-commit, the experience may become overwhelming and lead to mediocre results due to stress and a desire to just have the thing over with so that you can have your life back.

Burnout is real. When I told my manager I was ready to take on redesigning the suite of magazines, I made a point of working with him to make sure that much of my usual editorial work would be redistributed among other editors so I could focus almost solely on the redesign. That strategy helped prevent my work from bleeding into my home life. 

Do your research

Any successful business venture begins with a clear understanding of the customer. So target-audience research is the essential first ingredient of your redesign. Before even opening InDesign, my team and I made a point to survey our readership to get an idea for what they might want to see from a redesign. 

We asked questions like:

• What do you like about the magazines?
• What do you think could be improved?
• Do you prefer long-form articles, short-form articles, bullet points, none of the above, or a combination of the above?

Such questions helped frame how we approached the project.

A critical error some designers make is skipping the research and just diving right into a redesign, letting their personal preferences and instincts— instead of the needs of the target audience—inform the new look and presentation of the content. Don’t fall into this trap! Ask, listen, and then design.

I happen to be an in-house designer and editor at a research company, so conducting surveys and research around our target audience was a no brainer, but don’t assume that’s the case at every company.

Part of leading a successful redesign is prioritizing target audience research, which may mean advocating for its necessity and then potentially finding an outside research company to partner with. When you are vetting a company like that, make sure you’ll be engaging subject matter experts in the topics your target audience is interested in. The people delivering the data need to understand what it represents and have the ability to interpret it accurately. 

Depending on the type of research you want to conduct, the research company you choose to partner with will be different. For companies or freelance designers who don’t have the resources to partner with a research firm, there are more affordable options that you can do in house. For example, you can use SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, or other online surveys to gather insights from your target audiences.  

After conducting target audience research, you’ll have a much more solid understanding of expectations, needs, and wants that can serve as a baseline for the redesign.  

Plan and schedule

To establish a realistic timeline and goals for a redesign, you need to consider the project scope, taking into consideration the results of your audience research. 

You should include all the stakeholders—everyone, not just designers—in an initial brainstorming session for the redesign. Present them with the findings from your research, and reinforce that the goal is to create a product in line with audience expectations and desires. Approach brainstorming with this shared understanding.

Your brainstorming should result in an overarching goal that answers the question: “What do we want to accomplish with the finished product?”

With that goal in sight, you can start to develop your redesign project. Begin by breaking down the large task ahead into the steps it will take to get there. Then, by being honest about how long each step will take, you can determine a realistic timeline. Don’t just say “yes” to a timeline that’s proposed for you. 

Using this method, I estimated that it would take me six months to create mock-ups and templates for our company’s six magazines and an additional week to create a style guide. I put dates on my team’s Google Calendar, so that everyone would know when to expect to participate in a review of the mock-ups and when a template should be finalized.

This timeline turned out to be pretty accurate, and at no point did my work bleed into my personal life—even though early on in the process the pandemic emerged and we went from working and meeting in person to holding brainstorming sessions and reviews over Zoom.

The magazine covers after the redesign

From Research to Template

Before diving into designing mock-ups, set up a base style guide in InDesign and get it approved by stakeholders, so that there are clear parameters from the start around fundamental elements like page dimensions, color palettes, type choices, and the overall vibe that the redesigned product needs to achieve. 

A big hurdle many designers face is knowing where to start when they’re faced with the first blank page of a template in InDesign. The style guide accomplishes two things: It gives you a place to start, and it ensures that the mock-ups you present are in line with everyone’s vision. Now free from guesswork, you can confidently design alternatives that will work on all levels. 

The first magazine template I mocked up would become the backbone for our other five titles. I kept in mind not only what would resonate with the target audience and the vision that all the stakeholders had for the magazines but also made strategic design decisions to simplify the process of producing the entire line of magazines. 

Tip: Set up your color palette, and create paragraph, character, and object styles right away for elements like body copy, headlines, and other standard design elements that will repeat throughout the document, as established in the style guide. By using styles and swatches rigorously, you can easily change your palettes throughout the design process. See Alan Gilbertson’s article on the roots of efficiency in Issue #4, for lots of great advice in this area. 

Before On the Menu underwent the redesign—and a name change to Trend Watch—it was created entirely in PowerPoint with no cohesive color palette. The only color that differentiated it from our other magazines was the blue used in the upper-right corner.

Solicit the right feedback

Part of leading a redesign is leading the feedback conversation and making sure you’re getting the information you need to move forward in the process.

When I conducted a review of my first mock-up with all the stakeholders after initial mock-ups were complete, I reiterated the overall goal of the redesign—yes, this is 100% necessary—and asked them two questions: 

1. What elements do you think work well? 
2. Are there elements that you don’t think work well? 

These two questions, asked in that order, helped prevent negative feedback from dominating. Stakeholders, especially non-designers, are often quick to point out what elements in a design need to be changed, but knowing what elements are working well is just as important.

Once you hear what’s working well, you can go into a second draft secure in a direction to lean harder into. If the only feedback you get from stakeholders is what’s not working well, then you’re essentially left guessing at what direction to go in with a second draft. 

Once you’ve reached the stage where your mock-ups have received full approval from all the stakeholders, it’s time to build out a final template, and you should now be in a position where that’s fairly straightforward. 

Start by setting up parent pages in InDesign (known as master pages in versions prior to the 2022 release). Parent pages may be simple, or they may be more complex depending on the project. For our magazines, my parent pages simply had a footer and header that would repeat on every page in the document with the exception of the front and back covers.

Next, create a list of the repeating elements that should have paragraph, character, and object styles. Create all of those. Take advantage of GREP styles to automate character-level text formatting if that will simplify your production. 

Finally, create a library and add assets that will be repeated from issue to issue and across product lines. Make it so anyone working with your template will have the assets they need at their fingertips.

It takes a team effort

If the word feedback makes you bristle, you might be getting too close to the project. You can’t think of it as your baby. 

To avoid falling into that dangerous mindset, I suggest keeping a note with the overarching goal of the redesign, the target audience, and stakeholders’ names near your computer, so that you’ll always be reminded that this is the brainchild of many individuals.

A food trend profile from Trend Watch now offers readers a more consistent color palette (gray-blue and golden yellow) and, thanks to more white space, a cleaner look.

How Do You Measure Success?

I’ve worked in a smaller team setting throughout my career, so I can’t speak to what would work best for a larger team. My advice for designers taking on a redesign in a smaller team setting would be to keep timelines and expectations realistic. Don’t set yourself up to be overwhelmed from the get-go by trying to accomplish what a larger team can in the same time frame.

With that said, make a point to measure the outcome of a redesign. In my case, I could track if the redesigned magazines led to a measurable increase in reader engagement. 

You can also run more surveys with end users or subscribers to gather testimonials and assess engagement. However, if you do so, it’s best to wait a few months before asking for audience feedback. Redesigns generally trigger some initial pushback from users as they relearn how to navigate your product; anticipate that. A few months after the redesign, you’ll get more accurate feedback because users have had time to adjust to—and evaluate—your changes.

 And lastly, after you get your feedback in whatever form it takes, present the findings to all the stakeholders. These findings will reveal the value of your work and highlight your accomplishments. 

I hope this article has given you some useful direction and the confidence to tackle a redesign project of any size head-on. So, when you’re looking at that first blank page, you’ll see it for what it really is: an exciting opportunity to build something new and great.