A GUIDE TO KELSH WILSON’S PROCESS

Starting a major communications project can feel complicated. Our job is to make the process clear, collaborative, and productive—and to make sure that every creative decision serves a purpose.

The particulars vary from project to project, but our work generally moves through four phases:

Research + Strategy • Concept Development • Content Development • Production

Talking strategy

We begin by listening.

During Research + Strategy, we learn about your institution, your goals, your audiences, and the communications challenges you need to solve. We review existing research and planning, talk with the people who know your organization best, and, when appropriate, conduct focus groups and interviews with the audiences you need to reach. We also think carefully about how the communications we create will actually be used—where audiences will encounter them, what you want them to understand and remember, and ultimately what you want them to do.

The result is a clear strategic foundation for the work ahead, often captured in a Project Brief or a more extensive Report of Findings and Recommendations. It gives our team and yours a shared understanding of where we're going and why.

Getting creative

With the strategy in place, we move into Concept Development—bringing writers, designers, photographers, and other members of the creative team together to explore how the strategy should come to life.

How should this project look and sound? What will give it impact? What will make it feel unmistakably right for your institution?

We don't begin by asking what has never been done before. That's a good way to end up with something clever but irrelevant. Instead, we ask what will express this particular institution, reach this particular audience, and accomplish this particular job.

We develop and present creative directions that make those possibilities tangible—combining design, language, imagery, and content ideas so you can see how each approach might work.

Then we talk. We question, listen, debate, refine, and sometimes test ideas with your audiences. The process is collaborative by design. The goal isn't simply to arrive at something everyone likes. It's to arrive at something that's right.

WRITING AND SHOOTING

Once the creative direction is established, we move into Content Development and make the project real. We interview. We write. We scout locations. We photograph and film. We gather stories, facts, voices, and details. And because all of this work grows from an agreed-upon strategy and creative concept, every element has a reason for being there.

Preparation matters enormously. So does being ready for the unexpected.

We may know exactly what photograph we're looking for or what story we need to tell—but we're always watching for the moment, image, quote, or idea we couldn't have planned. The best creative process leaves room for discovery.

As content comes together, words, images, and design begin working as one. You see the project taking its finished form, review it with us, and help us refine the details.

FINISHING THE JOB

The final phase is Production—turning approved creative work into finished communications.

Depending on the project, that can mean meticulous proofreading and file preparation, print supervision, website development and testing, video finishing, or coordinating the many details of a larger communications program.

This is the stage when details matter most. We manage them carefully, working with our clients and production partners to make sure the finished work lives up to the ideas behind it.

Then the project goes out into the world.

Students encounter it. Families respond to it. Donors are inspired by it. Communities recognize themselves in it. And the work begins doing what we intended from the start: helping your institution move forward.

A celebration lunch is never a bad idea either!