Finding Balance Between Planning and Design

 

 

If you are looking to diversify your business to boost your bottom line, an essential step is determining what you can offer that is complementary to your pre-existing services. For photographers, it may be bringing in videography services, whereas stationers may be ready to try their hand at calligraphy.

Planning and design often go hand in hand. Event planners and designers are in the unique position of overseeing most aspects of an event, whether it’s the logistical side or the creative side. For this reason, many event planners choose to expand into design, and vice versa.

When a professional can handle both sides, it simplifies the process for clients and also ensures a seamless event from start to finish.

Anyone looking to offer both planning and design will need to find a balance in order to allocate the proper time and effort appropriately. While a full-service planning and design business can certainly increase your revenue, it does come with its challenges.

Let’s walk through the steps to finding balance between planning and design!

Design Ideas.

In most cases, you’ll want to start out with design ideas to plan accordingly. It’s essential to get to know your client in order to effectively grasp their event vision. While Pinterest can be beneficial at this point, it’s critical to first figure out what makes a client unique so that you can tweak those Pinterest trends for a fresh look.

From there, you can start to narrow down vendor options based on the desired style and event budget. Consider giving this stage about three to four months so you can dig deep into the details and prepare for the next stage, production.

Production.

With the event vision in place, it’s time for the production logistics of coordinating a vendor team and ensuring that everything is moving at the right pace. This may include signing contracts, paying off deposits, finalizing agreements, and communicating with the team with questions, updates, and requests. This process may be seven or eight months since this is generally the bulk of the work, but it really depends on how much time you have in the planning process.

Coordination.

The final stage, coordination, is something that planners and designers are both familiar with. Coordination tends to happen during the week leading up to the event (or sooner, if it’s a very complex event). At this point, all of the planning and design should be in place and it’s time to tie up any loose ends and add the final touches. Keep your event team on the same page and create detailed vendor timelines within your AllSeated account so everyone can stay organized.

While planning and design incorporate unique specialties, there’s no reason an event professional can’t take it all on themselves. If anything, bringing these responsibilities together creates the foundation for a truly cohesive event experience for everyone involved.

Kim Sayatovic is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Belladeux Event Design, a full service wedding and event design firm based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Of Possible Interest:

 Why An Event Organizer Should Use AllSeated  

Why Use AllSeated To Create A Vendor Floorplan