Design For Your Customer, Not For Other Designers..
Vol. 039
Design For Your Customer, Not For Other Designers.
You may feel frustrated when all of your “cool ideas” are shot down by the client, and you ultimately land on a “bland” creative direction. It’s time to rethink this disposition.
A quick bite:
As designers, we are in the business of organizing and simplifying information to better human processes and experiences...But, that doesn’t always look cool. And, sometimes not looking cool is frustrating, because that’s what everyone else is doing. I have 5 reasons below why you should focus on what your client wants and needs (even if you don’t like the design direction) as opposed to what other designers will ultimately think.
Continue reading below…
Stop designing for other designers: what you and your design colleagues want (or what looks cool, fun and trendy) is not always what’s best for your client. It’s often not even what they want!
Over the years Vicarel Studios has worked on countless projects: big, small, fun, terrible, great, brief, drawn out — you name it, we’ve probably been through it. With this experience has come much learning, and if I could go back in time and apply a single piece of knowledge to my previous processes, it would be this: design for your client, not for other designers.
It’s easy to get caught up in the drive to make stuff look trendy and cool (because that’s what we see on the internet.) I’m here to say “NO — bad!” Pretty eloquent, right? But seriously, making your client happy is what matters, not creating something in the cool style that you see on the blogs (even if that means letting go of that cool scorpion illustration that you really wanted to use 🤦.) We all need to let go of the vanity metric, and here’s why...
The client knows their product and service best
In the past I’ve found myself feeling like after 4 hours of research, some Pinterest image searching and reading a few blogs, that I all of the sudden understand a new market, product or category just about as well as my client does. It’s no surprise that in reality I, ugh... I don’t.
At this point in my career if someone is actually hiring me for a project they likely know a whole damn lot about whatever industry they’re in or service they’re offering. I MUST listen to them. I must listen to what they say, what they don’t say, what their audience needs, what their product/service does, and decipher all of the in between.
That’s our job as graphic designers: to listen to the problem, and suggest the best solution based on how we understand their audience, product positioning, etc.
Though, it's not uncommon that I might overlook something. Maybe I’ll overlook that while their target audience is largely female, these women almost always shop with their male counterparts — these are the types of oversights that ultimately could prove to be detrimental. However, through embracing a collaborative design process as well as the client’s innate understanding of their own industry/service, we can ultimately arrive at a more appropriate, profound solution.
You’ll often learn far more from having conversations with your client than you will searching for “wellness logo inspiration” on Dribbble. Talk to them, engage them, listen to them. This will give you far more ammunition to design with and ultimately more buy in from your client.
A design focused on your client (as opposed to cool trends) might not get as many likes as you had hoped, but it considers all of the nuances of their project — these are the things that the other designers aren’t seeing — and that’s what’s most important.
Remember, you are a service business
In essence, you are being paid to do what they ask of you. Of course, there are parameters set with a contract, but your job is essentially to do what the client wants. Let’s say your client requests the use of sage green in their brand, but you really wanted to use a gradient because that’s what you’ve been seeing a lot of. If you feel that the gradient truly solves the problem better than sage green, you definitely should use your expert knowledge to say “hey, this probably won’t resonate with your target audience”, but if they’re insistent...you have the choice to either walk away or make it happen.
Your client doesn’t care what other designers might think, and they often don’t care what’s trending. If yours and your client’s visions aren’t aligning on what’s best, it is your job to straddle the line of what you know is best and what the client requests. Through getting better at selling, persuasion, and generally understanding business and marketing, you will, with time, begin to close the gap between what they want and what you know is best.
An important note: while yes, you are being hired as a service to essentially appease your client, it’s also your job to constantly be pushing the boundaries and using your expertise to help them do more/better/greater than they directly requested. Don’t take everything they ask for at face value.
The ultimate goal is to solve the problem and to satisfy the needs of your customer. Your customer’s happiness is the backbone of your business, and if they’re unhappy with the work, they won’t be a repeat or referral customer.
The client is always right (even if they’re wrong).
Consider your experiences when calling a large company’s 1-800 number: Chase Bank, for example. Even if you call in heated, frustrated, and yelling helpless garbage, their customer service agent will calmly reply: “Oh, I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this issue, sir. We can absolutely help you resolve this matter…”
I generally walk away from these instances feeling diffused, satisfied, and damn happy I’m with Chase. It’s like therapy. Playing out this situation highlights a “client first” or “the client is always right” mentality.
People will call in screaming that their account is busted, cursing out the customer service agent; when, in reality, they were just entering the wrong password. Even though it was actually the customer’s fault, the customer ultimately feels like they received the ultimate service. This is how you want your client’s and customers to feel. If they ask for sage green, show them sage green...but also show them the gradient that you wanted, and then talk through the pros and cons of both.
Graphic designers often live in a vacuum.
It’s not uncommon to want to regurgitate your own version of the most recent best thing you saw: you’ll want to do a gold foil this, or a spot varnish that. You’ll want to do a fancy die cut, illustration style or bold color palette like you saw on that fancy design blog...sometimes graphic designers are so deep in the trenches of the actual, physical design, process and programs that we lose sight of what we’re actually here for: we’re here to service people. We’re here to better the experiences and lives of humans through design.
It’s no surprise that a fancy die cut or illustration style might not be the best way to communicate or solve a problem: sometimes the solution is straight forward, bland, and uninteresting. Not everything you create is going to be portfolio or share-worthy, and that’s 100% okay! Remember: likes, comments and other vanity metrics don’t pay the bills, your clients do.
Trends are just that
It’s easy to get caught up in the desire to follow the latest and greatest art and graphic design trends. Whether that’s using gradients, minimalist icon design, bold color palettes or hand lettering, design trends are tough to resist because they seem to be “what’s best” in the moment. Because a style/graphic design approach is trending, you see it often — it’s featured on all the blogs and instagram feature accounts — and you may feel like you’re supposed to do that too. However, if the trend does not serve a functional purpose in your design, it’s mostly likely unneeded.
Trends are temporary, and design should be timeless. While following a trend may be appropriate from some of your clients, it’s certainly not right for all of them.
As the famous architect Louis Sullivan famously said: “form follows function.” Use this concept as a north star.
But, don’t get trapped in this. You have a valuable skill set that you must convey to your client. They did hire YOU for a reason — you are the expert. So, a few quick caveats to consider:
The customer may “always be right”, but not every customer is the right customer. Don’t build and flex your graphic design business and creative services around the wrong customers.
The client may know their business/audience better than you; however, you as the graphic designer or art director may have a better understanding of how to visually communicate with that audience. Don’t be afraid to put your foot down and stand your ground on what you think is the right choice: your customer and their customers will value that.
Yes, as a freelance graphic designer or creative entrepreneur you’re a service business, but that doesn’t mean you’re a rug: you don’t need to let your customer stand at the helm of the ship and walk all over you (ya like that rug pun?). Be sure you have a contract in place so that you can push back when they’re asking for work out of scope, and continue to push the work you feel is right for the brand/business. If they don’t bite, oh well. At least you tried.
Listen to your client, trust your client, and appease your client. But, do so while also pushing your design knowledge and expertise. When you focus on your client, and solving their problems, and not just fancy design trends, you’ll not only create more successful work and repeat customers, but you’ll find the process to be far more fluid.
Best of luck out there yall!
