I ♥ clients
Out of context: Reply #66
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- gramme0
Designers are like hairdressers, it is above all to provide a service for a client, making an artistic statemant of your own comes second, some hairdressers seem to miss that, and therefore make unhappy customers
Communication with the client is very important
grown-sexy
(Jun 27 06, 10:35)Corporate communications, or even your sister's wedding invitation, are a bit more important than a haircut. You're making an unfair comparison; graphic design is juuuust a bit more complex than cutting hair. And any job that involves skill, delicacy and originality requires a certain amount of trust from both parties involved.
All of our clients seem to understand that we are experts in visual commmunication, which means that if they provide us with a message, they will trust us to convey the message visually. Granted, we listen closely to them and are careful about choosing our battles; they are paying our bills, after all.
The biggest problem I run into time and again with clients is that they don't seem to understand their audiences; at the end of the day, what really matters in their minds is whether they like what I do or not. The question they should be asking instead is how it will communicate to their audience.
Cheers to you, grown-sexy, if you don't fall into the bottomless pit of htis category.
I think the reason why many rifts happen between client and designer is because many designers don't really take strategy into consideration, or if they do it isn't made clear to the client. The client's perception of the designer is that they get caught up in the details and miss the big picture. The client then starts to see their designer as a wallpaperer, not a visual strategist who takes their problem seriously. This is why designers are not present in 99% of all corporate strategy meetings.
30 years ago this was not the case, because designers communicated better, understood the big picture better, and refused to talk about style before the strategy was nailed.
There are of course exceptions to this rule, our company being one of them.