My favorite project I've done was a personal advert campaign for Dr Pepper (on my portfolio). For this project I wanted to mimic the old and classic style of soda ads, in order to create a cool callback to the brands long standing popularity. The steps involved were conceptualization, rough drafts, image finding, creation then revision. One big roadblock I had run into was capturing the painterly effects of the classic soda ads and accurately creating a piece that is supposed to be from 50 years ago.

I overcame these obstacles through proper studying of tutorials, articles, and research of designs from this era, and the particular effects I would try to recreate for my ads.

I would say its drawing. As a graphic designer you almost never have to be a good artist or even know the beginning's of how to draw. But as its been a hobby of mine to doodle and create some amateur drawings, I would say knowing the fundamentals of drawing help me with the conceptualization of designs. Through the rough draft phase, I can sketch out designs that are a lot cleaner and easy to understand because of my "drawing skills" thus allowing me to explore different designs more quickly and effectively.

You need to have and use clear brand guidelines such as typeface, color codes, symbols, icons, and many more standardized visual assets of a company and how they should be applied together. These brand guidelines should also include the "brand messaging" by having a description of what the brand is about, their mission, and how they plan to get there. These three thing bring about the vernacular of the company and its messaging. Thus with using brand guidelines to design, visual and brand messaging consistency can be achieved.