Posts Tagged ‘Clients’

While I normally try to avoid work that is strictly SEO, it sure does seem like it is on client’s minds a lot lately. We have received a number of calls requesting proposals for SEO work, and the behavior seems to be consistent with a neighboring agency. Normally proposals like this would come our way every once now and again, but it seems like they have been pretty steady lately. After talking with these clients, what I have realized is that in all of the cases I could achieve what the client wanted however the results would never meet the expectations.

The true value of a design education or any education for that matter is its ability to teach you not facts, but how to learn. For a graphic designer that means learning to ask “why.” Why is this design effective? Why is the headline in that typeface? Why did the designer choose to use a combination of red and purple? Asking why is the foundation of any successful critique, and explaining why is what forces designers to think critically about their work.

In an article entitled “10 ways to battle site bureaucracy” Paul Boag, explains how asking why is the most powerful and simple way to avoid opposition towards a design by clients. Paul lists three reasons “why” is powerful, (#9 in the list) to which I agree, and is why I wanted to support his advice.

Designers constantly get challenged; you have no doubt heard a number of these challenges:

Why can’t you make the logo bigger?
Are you sure the type should be soo small?
What if we added a couple of drop shadows to make it “pop” more?

Clients are very quick to challenge designers on their choices, however the doing the opposite is often met with tension. Because of this tension, some designers eventually give up and let the client dictate the work. We all know the perils of getting into the habit of letting clients dictate projects, however what about taking this scenario a step further and outright challenging our clients?

As designers we have a unique perspective into the inner workings of companies and products. We are the ones who find the best features of these entities and turn them into visual value propositions. But what happens when you are working for a client who has no value proposition? What about the clients who are anything but innovative and different, those who only hope to maintain rather than evolve. Obviously business eventually replaces these organizations or products with better variants either through competition or obsolescence. But what happens when you must design for these clients?

One thing that really drives me nuts is the unfair way that non-designers judge our work. I have talked about why you should set expectations for your clients and question them, however I have not touched on how to judge whether a project is successful or not. This is often a hard thing to do because the client may not actually know what it would take for a project to be successful. Unfortunately clients often think that a project is successful when the end result looks the way that they may have imagined it. Usually this result is not one that will actually have an impact on their business objectives. So how do we find out what will have an impact?

One thing that I truly love about Mad Men season 1 has been the amount of focus given towards pitching clients and maintaining good working relationships. The character Don Draper is portrayed as an insanely creative copywriter but it is in front of clients where he really shines. His no bullshit take it or leave it mentality (see the embedded clip below around 37 seconds in) towards Sterling Cooper’s work is so inspiring that I too want to dismiss clients who are “non-believers.” If still you don’t know what I am talking about I highly suggest you quickly rent the first season, and check out this article on design observer for reference.

Ok I admit the title of this article may be a little misleading, however I am hard pressed to think of a better one (and I thought about it for a long time). What I am actually talking about is during the creative process. I no longer will be supplying my client’s with what they are expecting, and for a number of good reasons.

While the social media and Web 2.0 buzz has created a number of new job opportunities for web designers and developers I can’t help but wonder at what cost? I have written before about how some client’s just aren’t ready for a sophisticated website, and how we should consult them to reach their goals. What if the client isn’t ready for the commitment of building a community? There are a number of reasons that client’s may not be ready to support a community based site that they do not realize.

I recently got into an interesting discussion with some other designers when the topic of print vendors was raised. More specifically we were discussing whether they share their print vendors with their clients or keep these services “blind.” I personally have always handled the fulfillment of print services on the behalf of my client unless they had a standing relationship with a printer that was discussed prior to the beginning of the job. However I am finding that some designers have no problem sharing their vendors with their clients, something I do not agree with.

Even though I have said that a lot of search engine optimization companies sell a load of bullshit to their customers (check out the article to see what I mean), we as web designers can benefit from it. You may be wondering why I would dump on SEO one moment, and then praise it a couple of weeks later? Well, it is because this article actually has little to do with SEO, and more to do with the power of persuasion.