Design Context Publication Body Copy QUESTIONS ASKED
1. What is your name? (Purely for documentation/reference!) 2. What is your specialism with your design practice? 3. How do you balance design for designers (or yourself) and design for clients? 4. How do you manage client expectations and quality design outcomes? 5. Do you, generally, prefer client, or design lead work? INTERVIEWS & Q&A (REPLIED) Anthony Burrill (UK) www.anthonyburrill.com 1. What is your name? (Purely for documentation/reference!) Anthony Burrill 2. What is your specialism with your design practice? Graphic design / print making / illustration 3. How do you balance design for designers (or yourself) and design for clients? Currently it's an even split with commissioned projects and my own selfauthored work that's how I like it, an even balance between things I have to do and things I want to do 4. How do you manage client expectations and quality design outcomes? By communicating as much as possible, that's the secret to a good working relationship also setting realistic deadlines is important, it's crucial to give a project enough time to develop 5. Do you, generally, prefer client, or design lead work? Both, I like to have a healthy variety in projects Robbie Porter (UK) www.robbieporter.co.uk 1. What is your name? (Purely for documentation/reference!)
Robbie Porter 2. What is your specialism with your design practice? editorial illustration 3. How do you balance design for designers (or yourself) and design for clients? for me personal work is about developing and drawing for fun where as client work tends to be using the skills learned from personal work that I can apply quickly & well It probably balances out about 70% personal 30% professional in an average week but i'd like to get it closer to 50/50 4. How do you manage client expectations and quality design outcomes? I'd hope to be hired because a client liked my style of work and ideas, so hopefully their expectations would be to produce work in 'my way' with a job I send off a bunch of roughs first, they choose one, then i produce a final piece possibly in a variety of colour schemes, then they ask for any final changes. i guess it's best to keep the dialogue going so that they know the direction you're heading in and can help you steer it towards a conclusion that you are both happy with 5. Do you, generally, prefer client, or design lead work? they both offer different pros and cons... personal work is more creative but it can also be easy to repeat yourself client work is more problem solving which can be very satisfying but you might have to compromise with the content Megan Morris at Addison (UK) www.addison.co.uk 1) My name is Megan Morris. I sincerely hope you already knew that ;) 2) My specialism (right now) is print design. At Addison we do a lot of Annual Reports, and so that's where my focus is at the moment. As a lot of them have gone to print though, we'll start getting more branding work through. I've already done a bit, but primarily my work is for print. I've done some digital, but not a lot and it scares the hell out of me. 3) I think usually you have to balance it by starting with something you'll love. In an ideal world, all clients would appreciate perfect design and know it when they saw it. However, they usually don't. So I find, if you start a brief by
designing something that you're truly in love with, the client can't do much to ruin it. If you have to compromise too much, something isn't working somewhere. 4) I think at the end of the day, clients have the final say. As a designer you can give them your educated opinion, but you can't necessarily sway their view too much. Some clients are happy to go with whatever you suggest. Some know what they want and can be a nightmare. Others however, can be too easily convinced. For example, recently I designed a logo on a cheaper rate for someone I know. He loved the rough draft of the logo so much that he didn't want me to develop it. I tidied it up in Illustrator and sent it to him. That's all he wanted, and couldn't see beyond what I'd done. You can't really manage it too much. Try your best to make it as best you can, but it's always the client who's opinion really matters. Even if you hate it, as long as the client is happy, you're a good designer and job well done. 5) I prefer a mix of both. I find that doing freelance work means you're less likely to sway the client. Working for an agency, it means that the client thinks of the agency almost as a whole board of experts. Therefore if the agency suggests something, it has more weight from it, even if it's usually come from one designer. I will always prefer work where I can make the client happy. But the best kind of work is that in which the client believes they're in charge, even if they're not. Owen Davey (UK) www.owendavey.com
1. What is your name? (Purely for documentation/reference!) Owen Davey 2. What is your specialism with your design practice? Illustration 3. How do you balance design for designers (or yourself) and design for clients? I like working within boundaries, so I just stretch as much as I can within constraints clients put upon me, and try to push the design for design elements if I can. If you get a good Art Director, this can be pretty easy anyway. 4. How do you manage client expectations and quality design outcomes? Not 100 per cent what you mean here. I always try to make my work as good as it possibly can be, so I've never had a complaint about quality. I've had to edit content, but the quality hasn't ever been brought into question
5. Do you, generally, prefer client, or design lead work? Again, not sure what you mean here. What do you mean by design led? Doing stuff without a client? Well clients are good because they give you a place to start with a project and get you to step out of your comfort zone. They also give you money. But then doing stuff for myself can be really fun too. Don't get much chances to do it, to be perfectly honest though. Mathias Haddal Hovet at Heydays (Norway) www.heydays.no QUESTIONS 1. What is your name? (Purely for documentation/reference!) Mathias Haddal Hovet 2. What is your specialism with your design practice? Concept thinking and graphic design in general 3. How do you balance design for designers (or yourself) and design for clients? From my point of view, every task has a client: either its me or someone outside the company. Theres a problem and we are to find the best possible solution within a time frame and budget. You use the same tools, way of thinking and approach to most problems, big or small. Map problem, search solution, develop, deliver. 4. How do you manage client expectations and quality design outcomes? By mapping expectations and limitations early. Before you do anything really. Quality varies, as in everything in life — and motivation can be killed by bad chemistry. But you always try to stay professional and solve the problems you are paid to solve, in a way both you and the client can be of. 5. Do you, generally, prefer client, or design lead work? A combination. Every project needs solid input from the client. We need their information to learn and understand their business, produkt or service. Then, since we are paid to challenge and ask the though questions, we need to gain their thrust and togheter solve the project. We design and they correct and give input. The most important part is that the roles are not mixed, and that designers do the design work and that the client gives input about the product (its not up to the designer to guess who the target audience is).
Dima at Qus-Qus (Russia) www.qus-qus.com 1. Dima Kuzmichev 2. Graphic design, Editorial, Branding, Experience, Strategy, Ideas 3. That's an interesting question indeed. But currently I guess it doesn't matter who your clients are. Design should be more human centered. I mean it's not something beautiful for you or just for your portfolio. It's for people. Design can make things better, easier, more useful or playful. Design can solve really serious problems. Design and branding are able to connect people and company. Design is able to enrich your life or improve your mood. Etc, etc, etc. I think design is not a decoration, is not just a beautiful picture. Design is a really important thing now. It's important for people, for business, for economy and even for the planet. But if you don't like people, if you don't like or don't want to understand client's business and their needs, if you don't want to improve something and do it really good for people and your client (not for yourself at first) — you are on the wrong way. 4. Sometimes it's difficult. But now I realize that the designers or agencies should work "with" clients rather than "for" clients. And it's a completely different story. So, from the very beginning you should work as partners, not as "designer and client", you should discuss problems and different solutions together. You can tell them your own point of view on the problem and client's ideas, why it doesn't work or how we could make it better. What kind of style (for example) would work better for this audience and so on. And if you understand each other the product will be good. Otherwise, just don't work with this client 5. It depends on tasks and clients. If you have a really difficult task, with a lot of restrictions it may be interesting to find a great solution for the client in this difficult situation. And it's a challenge. In the second case, If a client has a really strong vision of their company and the product they make, you don't have a lot of freedom to experiment, but it would be really interesting too. You should understand their philosophy, their way of life and create the product/brand which reflects their own story (but if you like their story). And of course it's not about bad design, good design should be done by default. But story — is the first. And in the third case, if a client doesn't have a really strong vision on what they want, and you have enough freedom to experiment, it's interesting, of course. But it should not be just experiments for yourself, it should reflect the main idea of strategy you create and of course it should work well for the client's business. Tobias van Schneider (Germany) www.vanschneider.com
1. What is your name? (Purely for documentation/reference!) Tobias van Schneider 2. What is your specialism with your design practice? I specialize on Interactive Experiences as well as Digital Branding. I have a broad background, coming from traditional print going into more digital interactive experiences and they always will be connected in some way, at least that's my goal. 3. How do you balance design for designers (or yourself) and design for clients? Well, this is a pretty easy job I think. Design for Designers is just for one particular target audience, and the easy thing about it is that you're exactly in the same target group. This makes it easy for you to design for this particular group, since it's basically for you. Designing for clients usually takes much more time & much more research. Not sure what you exactly mean with balancing it. In the end it's about what YOU like to do. If you're a designer that only want's to design for designers, that's totally fine. I like both, but I prefer designing for the people outside of my "designers bubble" 4. How do you manage client expectations and quality design outcomes? I tend to educate clients when it comes to design. Managing client expectations also depends on what expectations YOU have. In an ideal world I have my own expectations, the client works with me because he can identifies with those expectations. If there is no alignment of expectations from both sides in the beginning I wouldn't suggest working on together - Hope that makes sense. 5. Do you, generally, prefer client, or design lead work? It's both the same. The challenge is to combine both of it & especially trying to educate your client or choose the client carefully so it matches up with your expectations.