design dispatch 002: "I'll Know It When I See It..."
The seven most frustrating words a design consultant or director could hope to never hear from a client. This statement signifies that a client knows what they don’t like but are at a loss for articulating what they do appreciate. A designer involved in a project with such clients will encounter a shifting brief, lack of direction and a complete disregard for the design process; an exasperating experience after spending hours of work on presentation after presentation of new, carefully considered concepts.
Last year, I had my very own “I’ll know it when I see it” consulting project. I was freelancing for a design studio that had been employed directly by the international marketing department of a very large global cosmetics corporation (so large and so global that you very likely have some of their products in your household).
It began innocently enough. We won a bid to develop the structural packaging; branding and identity for a new line of hair care products. A great opportunity, filled with promise and potential, especially for our relatively young studio. Soon after establishing the terms of our contract, we met with the marketing team to discuss preliminary ideas and solidify some guidelines. It seemed safe to say that all parties involved had a mutual understanding of scope and direction. Little did we know… After two progress presentations, we began to experience ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ syndrome.
The first sign was a shifting brief; the client began to change everything we had previously agreed upon. As a creative, you can expect things to change as you work on them. In fact, it’s important to be open to the many ways a concept can evolve. However, in this case the requests were not organically derived through research or previous development. This was just vacillation between one whimsical direction and another from week to week, with the occasional introduction of new information which would have significantly altered our design direction had we known from the outset – just to make things worse. (A revelation of new information may not always be a client’s fault, however. Some clients who work for larger companies tend to be at the mercy of capricious marketing departments. But in this case, they were one and the same).
With the brief shifting, lack of direction from the client became more and more evident, to the point where they began to leave decisions up to us because they didn’t quite know in which direction to take the project (sign number two). It was as if they were expecting us to answer our own questions about their direction. Obviously this slowed the project considerably.
Clients also sometimes adopt a ‘push a button and it’s done’ mentality (sign number three). This is usually symptomatic of someone who is considerably ignorant about the design and visualization process in general. Computers are pretty amazing, but no program exists that can resolve design issues at the touch of a button. These things take time. One graphic design colleague of mine recently exclaimed, “They [clients] wouldn’t argue with a surgeon over how long a procedure should or should not take – so why are they questioning me?!”
My cosmetics consulting project went on for months and eventually ground our studio’s morale down to about nothing. Why did we let the project get so out of control? Well, there are a couple reasons. On the one hand we obviously wanted to please the client and make a good impression which would hopefully secure future work. But also, ever the idealists, we saw this project as an opportunity to really put something thoughtful out into the world. To this day I still harbor a degree of ambivalence towards the outcome of the project. For while I am immensely happy with our work, the draining experience left me bereft of any excitement about the fact that our work could one day be in the hands of thousands.
Among designers I know there is a general consensus that this disconnect between client and designer attitudes and mentalities, stems from a lack of understanding. In many cases, a designer is required to know a client’s business in order to create effective design solutions. However, this is not usually reciprocated by a client beyond being familiar with a studio’s style (perhaps the reason behind the ‘push a button’ mentality).
From a designer’s point of view here is what would help: clients need not have a design background but they should at least have an awareness of its process. They should come to the table with exhaustive research so that they have a clear idea of what they want. Perhaps an intermediary between client and designer would also be a good idea. Someone who has experienced both sides of the equation. A good example is the design MBA. Graduate business schools are beginning to offer an MBA that trains the business savvy to become a bit more design savvy. It is too soon to tell if this will bridge the gap adequately but what is even more interesting is the offering of design MBA degrees at art schools. The California College of the Arts (CCA) begins its first semester MBA in Design Strategy this fall. It seems to me that this sort of curriculum would give business-brained individuals more of an insight into the design process, because it provides hands-on exposure to the creatively driven design process through studio practice. This sort of knowledge cannot be taught in any book, nor can it be lectured about by a professor. It needs to be experienced first-hand.
As with most relationships however, it is not a one-way street. Designers should view work with an uninitiated client as an opportunity to educate. As interested as clients are in a particular style of output, designers should attempt to convey their aesthetic as a function of their process. By shedding light on how great concepts mature from research and pencil sketches to a final product, a client will be able to witness and hopefully understand a studio’s development strategies. This will in turn generate more client participation - to the point where they become fully integrated into the process. This all takes work - but ultimately it primes your client to know it before they see it, enabling them to provide direction based on mutual understanding – the foundation of all good relationships.
