Crafting a Compelling Case Study

You’ve just spent weeks building something impactful but posting a couple photos to your website won’t be enough. A great way to take your audience on a journey via storytelling is with building a case study. I am sharing 3 tips with you on how to put together a case study that will get your audience and clients invested in your designs.

Before diving into building a case study, let’s learn what a case study is. Oxford Languages defines a case study as “a process or record of research in which detailed consideration is given to the development of a particular person, group, or situation over a period of time.” Simply put, designers can sharing their design process on a project in a detailed and organized way.

1. Take Lots of Notes

One thing that has been a life saver for me when working on a design, is making notes of each step. Takes notes during client calls, jot down any and all problems you came across, even record yourself working during the design process. It may be difficult to remember everything you experienced after the project is complete so taking these steps will benefit you in the end.

Back in January, I did a complicated logo redesign where the goal was to replace some of the design elements. Indian Summer was to be replaced with Broad Street Surf Shop. During calls with the client, I took a lot of notes but also while I was working I set up my camera to document the process. Without all those notes and recordings, I promise you I would not remember half the things I did 4 months ago.

2. Structure and Organization

The structure of your case study

The structure of the case study can vary based on the project. For a logo design, the three most important things to share are The Project Brief, the project Challenges and your Solution. The Project Brief should be an overview of what the business is and the expectations the client has from you, the designer. Most designers can sense the difficulty of a project almost immediately. In the Challenges portion of the case study, in order for the Broad Street logo’s illustrated painting to remain the same I know it would be the most difficult, so I purposely left that task for last.

For the Solution you can discuss how you laid out the project step by step and even share the tools you used for your most difficult task., For example, the healing tools within Photoshop were most ideal to removing the elements my client needed gone. I made sure you to build all the new elements first (the text, silhouette), arranged the pieces on top of the old logo… then once the pieces fit I started the removal process. This is why simply organizing and documenting the process benefits you in the end.

Organization of file/folder system

You know what your case study will entail, now we have to make sure we collect as much information to make it successful. This goes without saying, whether you are building a case study or not, keep yourself organized. I know each individual sees the world differently, so there can be no right or wrong way about organizing. My personal folder structure includes all the notes, client feedback, video recordings working behind the scenes, photoshop mockup templates and the final images for the case study template. Your organized files makes publishing your work go smoothly and you won’t end up frustrated searching for

3. Mock-ups Mock-ups Mock-ups

The best way to sell a product is showing your customers how it works. The same thing applies to logos. Prove that your logo design can be applied to a website, pamphlet or even a t-shirt. Broad Street is a store front, so naturally I mocked up the logo on to the real sign hanging outside the store. The shop sells merchandise, so I also put the design on shirts, bags, clothing tags.

Mockups are a fundamental part of selling your design to a client. A seasoned designer will know the best way to sell a product is simply showing how it works.

Go and build your first case study

My next challenge will be using these tips to build a case study on a music app that I helped design and style (using Figma and Tailwind CSS). I hope these tips will guide you on building great case studies for all your future designs. Make sure to grab the free Figma template to use as a starting point for your case study.