Talking about working with clients can be a touchy thing. Clients are the most interesting beast that we get to work with as graphic designers. They are, often, the most difficult and complicated part of the design process. Designers traditionally have had a love hate relationship with them. Designers NEED clients to fuel our business and to give us fun and exciting projects to work on. At the same time, designers too often get a chip on their shoulder about clients because they feel that clients can stand in the way of great design work because they might not catch the vision or understand it, or they are too afraid to relinquish control to someone else’s ideas.

This is the most fascinating and real problem in graphic design (and I am sure other creative fields). This can only be experienced through real life interactions, and really can’t be taught in the class room. Let us open the conversation on how we might figure out smart and effective solutions to this IMPORTANT problem. There are deffinetly 2 perspectives to this story . . . and we must understand them both to be successful.

POINT OF VIEW #1 – THE DESIGNER

Sometime designers feel stepped on, not heard and underestimated. Sometimes I have felt like Motzart in this famous scene from Amadeus:

Exhibit A – Too Many Notes – Amadeus

Designers can feel like the client doesn’t understand their work and tell them, unintelligently to change it.
Sometimes Designers can feel that their work is being undervalued . . . and that the client just doesn’t know how much work it takes to create good design, or how much money it might really be worth. I had a fairly constructive conversation with a client the other day – it went like this:

Exhibit B – 10 logos for $125

The result

Fortunately we were able to (hopefully) tactfully help this client understand that he was undervaluing the process and result of design. Design is an incredibly important asset and tool – and frankly sometimes people just don’t realize that. Sometimes DESIGNERS don’t realize that. We are a visual community – people experience the world in a visual way and so making things intriguing, interesting and professional is of HUGE value. Design doesn’t make a product, event or service quality or not, but it HUGELY effects the way it is perceived in the consumers mind. And in THAT way can make or break a product event or services success.

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POINT OF VIEW #2 – THE CLIENT

From experience I know that in the clients eyes, a designer often comes off as pretentious, prideful, stubborn, and self-important.  And these feelings are certainly not without reason.  Clients come to a designer believing that this person has a talent and an way of approaching things that they themselves don’t have.  They understand the designer to be a powerful creative professional and needs their help.

They can become surprised however, when the designer seemingly becomes harsh, immoveable and stubborn in their position.  A client might ask themselves . .  ”Are you working for ME, or for YOU?”  I recently got an email from a friend stating the following:

Exhibit A – Bigheadedness

I had to laugh when I read this because it is SO true.  Majorly, the problem that we are seeing here, is that graphic design is a SUBJECTIVE business.  Meaning that there is a lot of opinion involved – much more opinion than there is fact.  And when opinions get involved, and there is no clear way to decide who is right and who is wrong  power struggles, polarization and numerous disagreements quickly surface.  Sides start getting taken, and feelings can get hurt really easily.

The client can start feeling stepped on, undervalued and even taken advantage of!  Sound familiar?  Yeah . . . the designer sometimes feels exactly the same way.  Everyone goes away . . . a little for the worse.

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Fixing the Problem

So what cand we do?  Bridging this communication gap is of UPMOST importance!  I won’t pretend to have the answers, but I will plead that together we all figure this out!  I want to open this conversation up and ask all of you to give your feedback.  How can we solve this major problem?

Please leave comments below!

-Thanks