Working with clients always give designers a headache. In everything you do as a designer, whether it’s creating a leaflet, a brochure, or a 3D clip, you give it all your heart and skills. But in the end, it’s the same silent pain over and over again: Your most satisfying designs are always scrapped by the client.

You don’t have to be a designer to understand this feeling. Imagine putting all your valuable time and effort into one single project just to have it rejected like a little piece of nothing. This can slowly wear the designer out until they grow tired of the job. So why is there an ever-present conflict between the designer and the client while they can’t live without each other? Read on.

Different mindsets

Working in creative fields, you may find yourself asking these questions:

• Why does my client keep eyeing one this tiny detail and neglect the overall effect of the design?
• Why do they insist on me doing what they know, even when it’s outdated.
• Why are they do slow-minded? They’re driving me insane.
• I’ve worked with significant people like CEOs, but why do they seem like ignorant old folks who keep asking for infeasible stuff?

These questions have one thing in common: They make you wonder why they never agree with your solution of suggestion. Are they dumb or what?

The answer is simple, your client and you are looking at the design from different perspectives.

The design itself is approved by the big boss mostly based on their personal preferences. They can either like or dislike the product. But if you ask, they can hardly tell you the particular reason. Why? Because they are trained to think with a business mind, making profits is their priority. So, if you hear comments like “I don’t like Myriad Pro, can you change it to Helvetica?” or “Can you add a bit of the magenta hue?” from the boss, you must be the luckiest designer.

The goal of your client is to achieve positive results from the marketing campaign (judged from figures like the number of views, the amount of interaction, sales, etc.). While your concern, as an enthusiastic designer, is how to make your work look the best. But in many cases, if not all, beauty (especially one that has an effect on the numbers) is indeed in the eye of the beholder. You think this is beautiful, but your client thinks this is not pretty enough to attract their customers. The result? – Money is power.

For short, when one has a business mindset while the other focuses on the aesthetics aspect, with different objectives, harmony seems impossible.

Different experience

These are true stories that we’ve heard between a designer and a client:

Story number 1: The client: “What takes you so long drawing these boxes? This can be done with Word in no time.”

Story number 2: The client: “The model in this picture looks too much of a Caucasian while my product is targeting Vietnamese customers. But I really this picture, can you make this model look more Vietnamese?”

These stories sum up two types of clients that you may have met.

1. The one who doesn’t really know anything about designing, but thinks the job is as easy as putting pictures together using Adobe software (or Microsoft Office. I mean, they’re technically the same, right?).

2. The one who deifies designing tools. To them, Photoshop can do everything, including, for example, turning a Caucasian model into Asian.

Why, you may ask? The reason is that, most of the time, your client’s work revolves around tools like Word, Power Point, and Excel. So it’s understandable for them to apply their knowledge of these programs to others. Or your client could be one of those people who watch YouTube videos about the “incredible use” of Photoshop and are led to believe that it is a god-sent piece of software, the greatest invention of the technology revolution, and forget it has limitations as well.

Payer – payee relationship

After all, the relationship between designer and client is that of a payer and a payee. And in any industry, the payer always want to get more than they pay for. That’s why you may have heard things like “I think this is good enough, but can you offer me some more options?” from your client. That’s frustrating, but expectable, right?

Conclusion

The relationship between designer and client is one of the key aspects in the performance of a creative agency. The idea of the designer and the opinion of the client are two sides of the coin that affects the final product. From one single brief, the designer and the client can have different interpretations, but the outcome will only be one. Graphic design should propose a win-win solution for both the designer and client, so the ultimate decision must be best and unanimous. This booklet from designer Sok Hwee shows the different thoughts between designer (left side) and client (right side). It serves the purpose of a reflection for young designers to think about how they should handle their relationship with the client. Let this be the conclusion for this week’s blog post. Whether you’re the designer or the client, we hope you’ll gain a better understanding of each other for a happier and more effective cooperation.

By SDMedia