When Worlds Collide Thoughts on designing for clients By Dave Underwood, Media Services, CU Boulder Graphic design is a strange sort of business. It’s artsy, subjective, impressionistic, emotional, and difficult to measure in any objective way. That’s why I like it. But when the mindset of the designer meets that of the businessperson or the administrator, things can get weird. For that reason, I hope this little laundry list of cautionary tales and tips proves helpful as you begin to design in the so-called “real world.” I know I’ve left out much that still needs to be said about designing for clients, but hopefully the following discussions will help you avoid a few of the more common pitfalls in your designing future. Good luck! Be a team player When you're working on a project, there will typically be many players; the client, copywriters, photographers, the printer, coders, etc. You will all have different talents and interests, but you’ll ideally share a common agenda: getting the project done properly, profitably, and on time. Working positively with the other players and anticipating problems that may slow or damage the overall process should, by default, be your overriding goal. Fixing problems is much more productive than fixing blame. Never work on spec There seems to be a common myth that designers, like artists, would be plying their craft no matter what. Even in the absence of a paying project, the stereotypical designer supposedly likes nothing more than mucking about with colors, shapes, and concepts. In other words, people often think of us as hobbyists, born tinkerers who love what they do, and don't care so much about getting paid. That's why we're so often asked to design on spec. "Hey, why don't you see if you can improve on this website. If you end up with any good ideas, we'll pay you." Or my favorite: “Play with this poster idea, would you, and see what kind of cool stuff you come up with.” That sort of thing. Here's a simple solution: consider yourself a plumber. That will clarify everything. Do work on spec Having just told you to never work on spec, you should know there's an exception: when you're still building your portfolio. That's when you'll find yourself locked into a classic Catch 22. Without a robust portfolio it's hard to get work, and without work it's hard to build your portfolio. At this early stage in your design career, you may elect to work on spec, at a reduced rate, or even for free, if the finished project promises to be a plum. You may even offer to waive your design fees if the client agrees to put the money toward a higher-end print job. At this stage of your professional life, the pieces in your portfolio are your biggest investments in the future, and they should be as fabulous as possible. But once you're up and running, get tough and stay that way.
Work backwards Before you sell a client on a die-cut, embossed, 4-color design, investigate what that's going to do to their budget. And their deadline. It's always best to work backwards from what your client can afford in terms of production costs and turnaround before you start designing. I know first-hand how disappointing it is to sell a beautiful 4-color design piece to a customer, only to see it destroyed by a 2-color budget. Pricing can drive you crazy You've just knocked out an incredible logo. What's it worth? That's a question I still haven't figured out. If the logo took you just two hours, but the company does 3-million-a-year in gross sales, it's whole different situation than if you did the exact same logo for a mom and pop in the strip mall. My advice: always approach your design projects with value in mind. What's it worth to me? What's it worth to them? That’s difficult to do when you bill on an hourly basis, but you should always try to bear it in mind. Establish your smallest billing unit and stick with it One of the first things you'll discover as a designer is that if people can make changes, they will make changes. “Can you make our web banner a little less blue?” “Would you try moving the logo up an inch or so?” “We want our CEO to look taller.” It’ll make you crazy, and if you’re working for a committee, a team, or board of directors, it’s even worse. Try this: charge a set fee for every time you open your client’s folder. I like halfan-hour’s billing; you may prefer something else. The key is that you must be consistent, and you should keep a running tab available for your clients’ edification. Soon enough, they’ll learn to “bundle” their changes into fewer requests. And you can go for a bike ride instead of tweaking the afternoon away. By the way, this isn’t intended to be punitive. It’s simply a matter of selfpreservation. Dress for Success Not you, your work. In the old days, before the Internet, designers put a ton of effort into presentation. Mock-ups were put on branded boards with tissue and colored-paper overlays. Packaging designs were cut and folded to mimic the final product. In other words, showing the work was a big deal. And it should be still. Make sure your design ideas are delivered to the client in as flattering and as professional a light as possible. Some thoughts: • Don’t send huge files as e-mail attachments. This is bad Internet etiquette. Reduce your rough designs to smallish (800 pixel) jpeg files and put them somewhere on the web. Send the URL to the client. • Design in context. This is a great trick that can help tremendously in “selling” your work. If you’re doing a CD cover, for instance, do at least one little mock-up that shows your proposed design on a shelf alongside other CD covers. Ditto a Yellow Pages ad or signage for a company vehicle… You get the picture; you’re
trying to give your client a snapshot look at his or her proposed presence in the real world. • “Comp” in content, even if you don’t yet have it. Surprisingly, your layout will benefit from dropping in all of the pesky little elements that will ultimately show up in the finished piece. Go ahead and place the bar codes, copyright and trademark notices, dates and volume numbers, size and quantity information, menu items, whatever – basically any type of content that you know will be in the final piece. When your client sees this “fully-dressed” design with all of the trimmings, it will take far less imagination to visualize the work’s ultimate effectiveness… and that will help seal the deal. You may not have all of the copy you need when you start the layout process. No problem. Use Greek to fill in the spaces you’ve set aside for text. It will give your customer a good look at how text will “lay on the page” without being distracting. A good place to grab blocks of Greek copy: http://www.duckisland.com/greekmachine.asp Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit! Get bulletproof Eventually someone will tell you that your work sucks. Maybe not in so many words, but you’ll get the message in any case. Don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s them. Trust me. Fight for your place in the food chain This sort of goes back to the “hobbyist” notion. Since designers love what they do, and since they generally wear berets, live like Bohemians, and eat brown rice, they surely don’t care all that much about money. I’ve seen my invoices get “lost” until after the printers, web hosts, or you-name-it, got paid. It’s not fair, but it happens. Just remember; without us it would be a frightfully ugly world. Don’t let the other animals squeeze you out of the jungle. Don’t become a “file warehouse” When you finish a job, give all the working files to the customer. This is more for them than for you, but it will certainly make your life easier in the long run. If you were to – God forbid – win the lottery and move to Hawaii, your client could still take your layered Photoshop files (for instance) to other designers for updates and modification. From your end this is nice because you don’t end up with gigabytes worth of old files. Never edit copy I told you that you should be a team player and it’s true. But stay in your position, especially when it comes to copy editing. Here’s the scenario: you’re working on a web page and you notice that there’s no apostrophe in a contracted “its.” So you fix it. Guess what? You are now responsible for all of the copy in the job. Why?
Because now that you’ve made this one change, the client might reasonably assume you’ve read ahead and corrected other typos. And that’s not good. By all means, when you see a typo or any other glitch, send up a flag. Alert the copyrighter or the web coder, or whoever. But let them fix it so that everyone knows “who’s on first.” Be prepared to see your cute baby grow up ugly This is simply cautionary; you can’t do much about it. Let’s say you designed a drop-dead website. It’s perfect. Then the client turns the maintenance and updating over to Uncle Ernie, who’s cheap for a reason. A year later, you decide to check back in on Baby… and it’s grown up into the ugliest arrangement of pixels you’ve ever seen. Wave bye-bye and move on. Sniff. Your work isn’t precious Another cautionary anectdote. I freelanced a newsletter for a petroleum company. I got lucky on my first attempt and it came out really good, if I do say so. I sent it to their point-of-contact guy and he e-mailed me back that the top dog wanted a lion in the masthead. A lion! Me: But this is an oil company. What does that have to do with lions? Him: The owner of the company likes lions. Me: But you saw what I sent you? I thought it looked pretty darn good. Him: Yeah, but he really likes lions. Me: Okay, but it will look really terrible. Him: He really likes lions. What happened? I re-did the newsletter, with a big blue lion smack in the middle, and it looked great! I was more surprised than anyone. Sometimes it’s okay to abandon ship and start over, even if you think you’ve already found a successful solution. In fact, it could be argued that you should be able to completely re-do even your most brilliant work at the drop of a hat. This is how we grow. Surrender gracefully There are two ways to lose the game in design. (Okay, I’m sure there are lots more, but these two are ubiquitous) One, you lose the job, and two, you get the job, but lose the major battles. One. Sometimes you’ll find that your talents/tastes/abilities just don’t match up with your client’s needs. For whatever reason, all the rough ideas you’ve given them have made a resounding thud. This is actually okay. It’s surprisingly rare, but it does happen, and when it does, surrender gracefully. Try to find another designer for the client. Give them a box of chocolates. Check back in a month just to see how they’re doing. It’s important to part on friendly terms. (We’re assuming here that the client will still pay you for your efforts. My experience is that they almost always do.) You’ll find that even if the project came to naught
you will have grown professionally and your reputation will actually have benefited from your positive parting. Two. Let’s say you get the job, but in spite of all your best diplomatic efforts, the client insists on moving ahead with a very unattractive product. A logo with the Flatirons covered in shag carpet and the CEO’s mug rising like the moon from behind the mountains, for instance. Ugh. This is the battle you will lose. So what? Finish the project, do your best, give them a box of chocolates, and move on. That’s what makes you a professional. The Joy of Farming A good designer knows when he or she is in too deep. When that happens, it’s time to go farming. An example: Someone has hired you to do their organic products website, and they want it to look homemade and human. You’re first thought – and it’s a very good one – is that the site’s title should be done by hand, with brush and ink. It’s the perfect solution. But you’ve never done any brushwork, and your first feeble attempts look downright lousy. It’s time to farm it out. Sure, a professional calligrapher will make a big dent in your profit, but the client will be ecstatic with the results… and that makes for good press, which is the designer’s lifeblood. There’s another great aspect of sending work along to other professionals; you’ll likely see reciprocity. The calligrapher may hire you to do their website. The photographer may send you his clients. It’s all about teamwork, remember? We’re not the Mafia So fu-ged-a-boud-it. If your client threatens to take the design job to her twelveyear-old nephew, you should applaud her pioneer spirit. Don’t threaten her with fanancial ruin or international embarrassment for not using a “design professional.” Making people appreciate your unique talent is like teaching patriotism. If they don’t figure it out on their own, it doesn’t have any real meaning. Clients who go astray, i.e., try to do it themselves, hire middle school nephews, or use crappy templates they’ve downloaded from the web, eventually come around. And when they do, they’ll remember the professionals who didn’t lecture them. Like you. Contracts, retainers, and other yucky stuff As much as we hate the idea (well, maybe you don’t), a designer must also be a businessperson. This means we need to save our receipts, file taxes, keep a timesheet of sorts, and use contracts. Ugh. Contracts are wonderful instruments, though, in insuring that you and your client both know: • When the job is to be considered “done.” • How your work can be used and for how long. • If and how warranty items are to be addressed. • Who pays for stock photos, calligraphy, illustrations, etc.. • In some cases, who assumes liability.
… and a lot more. I don’t want to give you advice here on contract specifics; the law is a crop maze with attorneys at every turn. Scary. But if you intend to get serious about designing as an avocation, I’d advise you to talk to a handful of private-sector designers about their preferred style of contract. I’d suspect you’ll find a consensus. Retainers – front money – help keep projects moving. It’s surprisingly common to see jobs stall due to a missing photo, price list, block of copy, or whatnot. If your customer already has a small investment in the project, it’s surprising how much more quickly missing resources will fall into your lap. If you have any questions about design or working with clients, please feel free to buzz me. I love this field and I enjoy helping others in any way I can. You can reach me at: 303 492 2672 or david.underwood@colorado.edu Thanks! Dave