Any designers feel me?

[caelte]

Originally Posted by Brian SD

Definitely understand your point edmorel, about the customer always being right. JBZ makes a good point, though. I didn't study placing text boxes on InDesign documents and tracing photos with Illustrator, I studied design... a good designer is knowledgeable in the more philosophical as well as purely aesthetic aspects of design. If I am going to accept a job from a client, they're paying me to use my experience and knowledge of design to create the best solution to their problem, so to an extent, they should be willing to take my suggestions and trust my portfolio and experience, even if their instinct is to disagree. Sometimes the designer has to criticize the client's idea (though never directly), not because I want to get what I want, but sometimes the client just doesn't know what's best (often they get too tied up into specifics and it takes a lot of discussion to get the real big picture nailed down). As odd as it sounds, clients are much more prone to falling for trends and pitfalls that make for uneffective design. A designer is aware of trends and can use them (or avoid them) to the credit of the work. And ultimately the reward for me is the satisfaction of making the best possible work and hopefully increasing sales of whatever I'm advertising.

You can always tell when you have a client that understands how to work with designers. Communication is absolutely the 100% most important part of it.. though where I work right now I have a lot of quick jobs that need to go from start to finish in a couple weeks time, and I play have to play the role of art director, designer, illustrator and photographer, so unfortunately I don't have time in my schedule to have multiple meetings on the same project.

Also, to the above, thanks for the congratulations and thanks for the kind words Kipling.


There is a certain skill needed to get the client to want what you want.
You seem kind of pissed off with the situation.

Unless it's your own business, the way of things requires conformity.

Do freelancing on the side, or even pro bono work for charities.
Create a situation outside work where you are in control.

You've got to improve your chops if you want what you say you want.
You have less chance of the freedom to do so in an inhouse situation like you describe.

 

[migo]

I feel ya...it's hard to do your job when you get useless BS feedback.

 

[Brian SD]

Originally Posted by caelte

There is a certain skill needed to get the client to want what you want. You seem kind of pissed off with the situation. Unless it's your own business, the way of things requires conformity. Do freelancing on the side, or even pro bono work for charities. Create a situation outside work where you are in control. You've got to improve your chops if you want what you say you want. You have less chance of the freedom to do so in an inhouse situation like you describe.
I'm not pissed off with the situation, it's just a constant uphill battle that restarts every time you have a new client, which can of course become tiring. Every designer is told since day one of class that it's something you have to deal with. I was just venting.

 

[mr bunbury]

This is absolutely why I quit working in design. This kind of back-and-forth drove me crazy!

Here's the stuff I learned, though, before I quit:

1. Always give clients a *ton* of options. Even if they're hastily sketched and even if many are very mediocre. If we were designing a logo, for example, I would often produce 40-60 different options, just knocking them out one after the other in a few hours. Oftentimes clients simply feel left out of the decision-making process. There needs to be more opportunity for them to make decisions. If you front-load the decisions then that sometimes takes the pressure off the nitpicky stuff at the end. Of course you can always have favorite designs from the batch, and you can advocate for them--but you need to build in some decision-points for the client.

2. The austerity / gaudiness conflict is the most common conflict in commercial design. I found that you have to lay this out in the beginning with some kind of conversation. "What are you envisioning...? How are you picturing it fitting into the larger set of similar posters/logos/websites...? Hot or cool?" etc. And you have to be willing to go pretty far in the direction of gaudiness. The important thing is, in my experience, that this is talked about and addressed at the very beginning, with the advantages and disadvantages fully laid out for the client. Then you know what you're in for and you don't get completely reversed after the first design gets reviewed.

3. Eventually you will work your way up to clients who will really engage with you on the level of design. It will happen. When it does, it is a huge luxury--definitely *not* the norm. So you just have to accept that.

4. One good trick is to really use your contracts. Give your clients a roadmap to the design process: so many lternatives in round 1, followed by so many alternatives in round 2, with so many typography alternatives included, so many color combinations, etc. Don't make it an open-ended process. So for a logo I would offer something like: 40 alternatives, pick four; next, three variations of each of those four, for twelve total, pick two; next, four color variations and type variations on those two, for a total of sixteen, pick one. That's the process, and for every extra alternative there is a fee. But within that, put in a good faith effort to provide real alternatives, so if the client is going nuts about wanting a crazy gothic font for the logo, include that as one of the alternatives. But again the main thing is that the client gets the freedom to really choose, even if you are defining the parameters of the choice.

Now I teach literature--the furthest thing from design!

 

[caelte]

Originally Posted by Brian SD

I'm not pissed off with the situation, it's just a constant uphill battle that restarts every time you have a new client, which can of course become tiring. Every designer is told since day one of class that it's something you have to deal with.

I was just venting.

I read your response on art in another thread dealing with art ed and realised there may be more to your rant.

My guess is your unrest arises from a lack of satisfaction with being a designer, and not solely that you have to deal with the weak minded client.

I suspect you're really an artist and do the job to make a living.

There are always circumstances that anyone with a sense of responsibility has to give way to, but if your dissatisfaction arises from a sense of failing fulfullment rather than just ignorant clients, you may need to think about a change of jobs.

 

[Brian SD]

Don't get me wrong. I love graphic design and I love designing. I like satisfying clients and I get unequaled satisfaction from completing a project that I'm proud of. The moment when the package ships with the final product inside and the client calls you all giddy and stoked, all the sweating and stress and work that goes into the project vanishes and lifts up my week/month/whatever. I will work extra hard on a project, knowing that the end result is going to make it worth the extra stress. It's rewarding, and generally the clients who deal with designers, and design teams are all very interesting people with creative personalities so you learn a lot from just them as well. I love my field. Every once in awhile you run into a client where communication is stifled for one reason or another, or their vision of the finished product is vastly different from yours, even when the communication is solid. That becomes tedious and caused my rant. Though I do appreciate the advice. Mrjosh, nicely written. I try my hardest already to follow those things but I'm sure fluency in design communication with clients is something that gets better with practice.