Design processes and checklists turn subjective creative work into a repeatable system. They help teams capture requirements, review work, collect feedback, and ship designs without relying on memory or one person’s taste.
That matters because design is still business work. A strong design process connects user research, brand standards, approvals, and delivery so the final asset is not just attractive, but useful, consistent, and ready to perform.
In this Process Street article, we give you free access to 11 important design process checklist templates for UX, web design, branding, etc., including graphics, logos, approvals, and social media images. Click a section below to jump to the relevant template, or scroll for a full overview of each design process example.
- Our top 11 design checklists covering design’s vital areas
- Web Design Process
- UX Design Process
- Brand Identity Design
- Header Design
- Engineering Design Process
- Graphic Design Process
- Logo Design Process
- Animation Design Process
- Blog Image Design Process
- Graphic Design Approval Checklist
- Social Media Image Design
- How to create your design processes and checklists using Process Street
Our top 11 design checklists covering design’s vital areas
When formulating which areas of design to cover within this template pack, we had to start from the basis of use cases.
There’s little point creating separate checklists for typography or color choice because dealing with these decisions usually comes collectively as a smaller part of a larger process.
We’ve set out to create separate checklists for separate needs. From corporate branding to building and testing products. Some of these checklists are structured to be done internally within a company using the resources you already have. Other checklists are designed primarily with freelance designers in mind.
We tried to build these use cases based on who will gain the most value from them. However, as with all Process Street templates, they can be added to your account and edited to suit your specific needs. You can add steps or remove steps, add detail or media.
How you employ these processes in your business is up to you. Let’s take a look at them!
Web Design Process
The likelihood is that when you think of design one of the first things which pops into your mind is web design.
It seems like web design, more so than engineering design or user experience design, is something we all have an opinion on. After all, we spend a lot of time online bouncing around different websites and we’re exposed to countless different designs and layouts all the time.
That said, though we might all have an opinion on it, we don’t all do a great job in turning nice ideas into beautiful user-friendly realities.
Our Web Design Process is primarily oriented at freelance designers who are designing websites for clients. We’ve constructed this process in a way where both the designer and the client can use it as a collaborative space for the duration of the project.
When you upload work to the checklist, the client can check it out and then record their feedback in another field. With Process Street’s task-based assignments and due dates, you can set dates for both deliverables and feedback with notifications enabled. It’s collaboration through a linear timeline.
Click here to get the Web Design Process!
UX Design Process
Strong UX design is a crucial part of a successful website or app. However, it’s not only limited to the online sphere. The kind of design thinking which the internet has kicked into the mainstream has spilled offline. Now there are user experience managers who work on organizing the structures of retail outlets and similar.
Our UX Design Process, though, is focused on delivering high-quality user experience in the online world. As with any UX process, it is very research-focused.
To understand how your users interact with a website or would interact with a potential website, you have to ask them and test them. You need to understand their wishes and desires while studying their behavior.
In this checklist we take you through the 4 key steps of UX design:
- Conduct your user research
- Design your initial flows
- Put your designs into testing
- Assist with implementation and optimization
While conducting your research through this checklist, you’ll notice that you can use Process Street’s run link for checklist surveys. This will help you store all of your information within Process Street alongside your workflow. There are two different ways to carry out this process within the template. Check it out!
Click here to get the UX Design Process!
Brand Identity Design
Your brand identity is more than simply what you’ve called your company and whether you’ve chosen a nice pretentious color like chartreuse, cerulean, or taupe.
Your brand identity goes deeper than what you see on the surface.
This defines your brand and provides the first point of contact between your services and the potential end-user. A solid branding strategy is informed by your products or services, your competition, and the broader market. This is as much business analysis as it is designed.
Our Brand Identity Design checklist is aimed at a marketing company running a brand identity overhaul for an existing brand. It takes steps through the research and company understanding of the creation of the end deliverables: logos, promotional materials, letterheads, etc.
A brand is as much an ethos as it is some nice pictures on a piece of paper, so remember that your branding doesn’t finish when the checklist does!
Click here to get the Brand Identity Design!
Header Design
When we use websites we often take for granted how they are structured and presented to us.
This is simply good design.
When navigating a website, you’re normally doing so from the header of the site. A website like Amazon, which sells a million and one different things, allows you to navigate through the header and then filter down the side.
Your website is almost certainly not as big as Amazon. Unless eBay is reading. Hi, eBay.
This means that you may not need the complexity of a header that contains everything. How you choose to structure your header will determine whether customers can find the product they’re looking for or not. How easy your website is to navigate is vital for increasing your conversions.
Our Header Design Process is geared towards an e-commerce startup who wish to internally iterate and improve their layout and structure. We provide step by step guides through the research process and then propose easy to implement steps to improve. There’s an effort in this checklist to provide the reader with third-party solutions to help them optimize their website.
Not all of us can afford a designer all the time. Don’t worry, I’m looking out for you.
Click here to get the Header Design checklist!
Engineering Design Process
Not every design process needs to be visual and online.
In the engineering design process, we cycle through the steps necessary to create a new product. This has been based on building a niche custom solution to fit an already identified problem.
The checklist is written from the perspective of an engineering firm who have been contracted to improve the manufacturing process. They need to develop a particular piece of machinery to tackle the problems the client is facing.
I know what you’re thinking. You don’t design manufacturing parts. Well, it doesn’t really matter.
The core methodology behind the engineering design process is a universal one built as an extension of the scientific method. It’s the industry standard way of creating products, and I’m sure there are many of you who would love to go out and do just that.
Click here to get the Engineering Design Process!
Graphic Design Process
Graphic design is a phrase that is banded around a lot. It seems to be applicable to many situations or use cases. Ultimately, graphic design is used a lot because it is a broad term.
Graphic design is about combining text and pictures and manipulating those for a purpose. In some sense, maybe we’re all graphic designers. I digress.
Our Graphic Design Process works with the use case of a freelance designer who is tasked to create promotional materials for a company that wants to start a new marketing push. The graphic designer has to understand the motivations of the customers, the expectations of the client, and how to balance the two to create a beautiful and effective final product.
You can customize this checklist for your own internal use, or use it straight out of the box for freelance work.
Click here to get the Graphic Design Process!
Logo Design Process
A logo appears to be a very simple thing.
It’s normally very simple. Basic shapes and bold colors.
But creating a logo is so much more than that. An effective logo is immediately recognizable and embeds itself into the customer’s consciousness. Think of a few brands you know. Pick 5 off the top of your head.
Some of those brands will have logos you would immediately recognize, while others you would look straight past. What is the difference? The difference is the logo itself. Some work, some not so much.
Our Logo Design Process is structured so that the designer and the client are both present in the checklist and take their involvement in turns, one task at a time. This allows you to use the task assignments and due dates and helps you easily see the progress of the process.
Research-based and iterations-focused, this logo process should help you hone your company into one small little icon.
Click here to get the Logo Design Process!
Animation Design Process
There are as many ways to design an animation as there are animations to design – trying to tell you how to make an animation from start to finish would simply crush creativity and confuse both you and your client.
Instead, our Animation Design Process will guide you through the technical elements of creating an animation.
Whether you’re responsible for every element (scripting, the voiceover, etc) or just the animation itself, this checklist has everything you need to work with your client and produce results they’re happy with, without wasting time on needless revisions.
Click here to get the Animation Design Process!
Blog Image Design Process
This blog image design process provides structure to consistently create great images that capture your audience’s attention.
Whether this is for your own blog or a design for a client, use this template to stop relying on memory to make sure you get everything done to a high standard. Not to mention that it makes tracking your image design projects easier by supporting management and collaborate.
Click here to get our Blog Image Design Process!
Graphic Design Approval Checklist
For many designers, getting the final approval on your work may be one of the more challenging aspects of the project. That’s often because there are so many people involved in the process who need to sign off on the final product.
Our Graphic Design Approval Checklist Template provides a shared space for the designer, client, and anyone else to work together throughout the project.
You’ll be able to document all the project details and progress in one place and most importantly, it implements automated Approvals tasks throughout the process, allowing your clients to quickly and simply approve (or deny) your work as you move forward.
Click here to get our Graphic Design Approval Checklist Template!
Social Media Image Design
Designing images for social media platforms is a minefield of potential errors. Even experienced designers will have trouble remembering the various best practices for each platform, and a single mistake can make all of the work behind the image useless.
This social media image design checklist solves that problem.
Use our Social Media Image Design Checklist for detailed instructions and best practices for creating images for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, and Pinterest.
Click here to get our Social Media Image Design checklist!
How to create your design processes and checklists using Process Street
Process Street is a Compliance Operations Platform for teams that need design work, reviews, approvals, and handoffs to happen the same way every time.
The design checklists in this article can run in Ops, where each stage has owners, due dates, approvals, forms, conditional logic, and audit trails. That gives freelancers, marketing teams, product teams, and agencies one place to collect requirements, route feedback, track approvals, and prove the right steps were followed.
For teams that need stronger governance, Docs keeps procedures versioned and approved, while Cora, Process Street’s AI compliance agent, helps monitor execution and surface risks before missed steps turn into rework.
- Stop tasks keep a design workflow in the right order.
- Dynamic due dates keep client reviews, design revisions, and approvals moving.
- Conditional logic adapts each run to the design request, channel, or stakeholder group.
- Role assignments make ownership clear across designers, reviewers, clients, and approvers.
- Approvals keep signoff inside the workflow, with comments and decisions attached to the work.
The checklists in this article cover a wide range of design processes, from building a brand identity to transferring that identity into a website, then marketing your brand through campaign and social media assets. You can edit any one of these processes to fit your own design system, team structure, and approval path.
If you need a broader operating model before building individual templates, start with a process documentation workflow, then turn the documented procedure into a checklist your team can run.
Or, maybe you have a unique design process we have not yet documented via a checklist. If so, create your own checklist for that specific process. Watch the video below, Basics of Creating and Editing Templates, for more information.
Optimize your design processes and build your brand today using Process Street
You do not need a perfect design department to run a reliable design process. You need clear stages, assigned owners, review points, and a record of what was approved.
Start with one of the templates above, adapt it to your team, and run each design request through the same checklist. Process Street helps you enforce the steps, track the work, and keep proof of the decisions that shape your brand.
Sign up to Process Street for free, and get started!
Are there any design processes not included in this article that you would like help with? Comment below so we can keep improving these design operations templates.