How to Write Case Studies for Your Design Projects

If you want to know how to write case studies for your graphic design projects, you’ve come to the right place! Case studies are an excellent way of showcasing your skills and projects, helping potential clients understand your process and the impact of your work.

In this guide, you’ll learn the simple, step-by-step process for writing high-quality graphic design case studies, as well as some best practices to help you along the way.

How to Write Case Studies: The Best Practices

Before you start writing your case studies, take a few minutes to read over the best practices. By sticking to the below points, you can be sure that you’re creating high-quality case studies that shine the best possible light on your projects, workflow, and process.

Use High-Quality Images

Graphic design case studies are, in their very nature, visual products. When writing case studies for your projects, you should aim to include plenty of high-quality imagery that accurately reflects each of the stages within the project.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of graphic design, nothing could be more true. Think of the images as the meat of your case study, and the words as the complimentary sides that provide context and back up your work.

Keep it Concise

Because text should be minimal, this leads us to the next best practice: Keep it concise.

A case study should be concise and easy to read, providing only the essential information that prospective clients need to know about the project and how you work. You should be aiming to write a maximum of three paragraphs for each section below.

If you need to, you can go over that limit. But, it’s important to remember that the more text present on a page, the more likely potential clients are going to be discouraged from reading.

Focus on the most important details and keep your writing clear and to the point.

How to Write Case Studies: 5 Simple Sections

Now that you know the two most essential things to keep in mind when writing your case studies, it’s time to move on to what you came here to see!

Every case study should include five different sections that provide detailed (but concise!) information on your projects and workflow. These sections are Overview & Challenge, Approach, Solution, Results, and Roundup.

These five sections allow you to hit all the main points of your projects, and give potential clients a peek behind the curtain to see how you work.

Remember, when writing case studies, only include the things that you’ve directly contributed to. If you worked on a branding project, but only worked on the colour schemes, be sure to make that clear in your case studies.

Below, you’ll discover more about each of the five essential sections to include in each of your graphic design case studies.

Overview & Challenge

The goal of this section is to provide context for the project to the reader. You need to put them in your shoes when you were first contacted about the project.

Explain the client, their problem, and the challenge you were tasked with solving. When a prospective client reads a case study, they want to see how you work, so providing plenty of detailed information about the challenges will allow them to fully understand what was required from you.

Approach

Whilst a lot of us graphic designers work in similar ways, we all have little quirks and differences in our approaches. In this section, your potential clients will look to get a deeper understanding of how you tackle design projects, and whether or not you’re suitable for them.

In the Approach section, you should detail your design process and the methods you used during the project. Include any research you conducted, sketches, wireframes, or prototypes you created, and any feedback you received from stakeholders.

If the case study is for a branding project, and you sketched out a bunch of different designs for the final logo, take high-quality photos of those sketches and include them here. A good move is also to show the iterations of the final logo, including all the variations you created before deciding on the final design.

Solution

It’s here that you should show the final product that came from the design project.

Showcase your final design solution and explain how it addresses the problem or challenge. Use visuals such as mockups, photos, and/or videos to help illustrate your design solution.

Remember that potential clients want to see the quality of work that you produce, so be sure that all the visual elements you use in this section are pixel-perfect and high-quality. Nobody is going to hire a designer that has case studies full of blurred images or poorly cropped screenshots!

Results

For us designers, once the project is signed off, we typically don’t hear anything else from the client. This means that judging the results generated from your work can be tricky.

A good way of doing this can be by discussing the below questions, and providing honest information about how you think you performed during the project.

• Did you solve a problem?

• Does this logo look better than the previous version?

• Did you inspire the client?

Be careful here: Providing honest responses to these types of questions is very important, but it’s a fine line to walk between showing your skills and talking yourself out of a job.

Roundup

I discussed this in my article about writing conclusions, but I’ll repeat the important bit here: A lot of people scroll right to the end of an article to read the conclusion first. This means that when you’re writing conclusions to case studies, you essentially need to provide all the information you covered again, but this time in fresh words.

So, when writing the roundup for your case studies, summarise the project and your role within it, highlighting the main problems, and how you tackled them, as well as how well the final product achieved the objectives of the project.

You can also, if you feel this is necessary, include a quick bullet point list of things you learned during the project. Clients like to see that you’re always willing to learn and try new things, so this can be a good way of showing them.

Perhaps you learned a better way of exploring logo designs? Or maybe, after this project, you worked out a more efficient way of designing landing pages? Anything like that is good to highlight.

Conclusion

By sticking to the simple five-section framework, you can ensure you’re writing case studies that show the overall goal of the project, how you tackled it, and the final product that was produced.

All prospective clients are looking for designers that will be able to tackle a project efficiently, and create a solution that works for their brand or business. It’s essential, in your case studies, and portfolio as a whole, you’re doing exactly this, highlighting the value you’ll bring to the table, should they decide to work with you.

If you’re looking for more ways of showing your design expertise, you can’t go wrong with a blog! By writing about what you know, you can show prospective clients that you’re an excellent choice for their next project, and that they’ll be in good hands working with you.

If you want to start writing articles for your blog, but don’t know how, my 7-step framework is the perfect place to start!

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