Designing for a Client
When you make a contract to design for a client, it’s an amazing feeling. You take a look at what you’ve got to do and break it down into steps, prioritize what needs to be done, and you SKETCH like mad! You come up with all kinds of fanciful ideas - then take a step back and look at it, analyzing it over and over - until you have something to show the client: your first proposal.
Invariably, they will shoot back with notes on what should be changed, and it will be the most annoying thing in the world - if you’re new at design. Some notes will make sense, and others will frustrate you - how am I supposed to fit all that copy on this thing?! IDIOTS want that much copy on this thing!!!
THIS is where you need to take a step back and remember this: you are designing for a client, not for yourself. If you’re making something for yourself, the only person you need to please is you, right? Remind yourself you’re designing for your client, and it’s they that need to live with the product, and they should feel as if their needs have been met. Sure, there are things you should fight for, but on the whole, most of the notes you get back is stuff you shouldn’t sweat over.
The picture above is of the first step in a project I undertook this year where I work. My boss came to me to ask me to design some signage to identify the various branches of our department. It had to be simple, clear and imply a competent, serious, and helpful organization (note: the plaid was put in there as a joke because I’m very familiar with my client - it was also fun to figure out how to make plaid in Illustrator.)
It was a graphic project, but my inner industrial designer got the better of me. I quickly developed the idea to colour code the various help desks within a graphic identity to have users recognize that these are branches of the same department. Part of this plan involved colour-coded tags on our equipment so users would, hopefully, subconsciously recognize where equipment they borrowed belonged.
I proposed all of this to my client, showed him that rough first image, and he gave me feedback, which I used. Inventory tags were out, and colour coding was still in. The first round resulted in this mockup:
The colours were a bit brighter, which I felt helped create visual appeal. The signs, which were represented to scale, reflected the physical locations they’d inhabit. I used quick and dirty mockup techniques to pitch where signs should go, like so:
I thought it looked pretty good. In my mind, I had done my job; I took the feedback, and I made the changes and this was going to be the end of the road. All you experienced designers out there are rolling your eyes because you know what happens next: more feedback.
In this case, it was pretty simple: make the signs all the same aspect ratio, and all one colour, since inventory tags were out, and for unity’s sake. I got to pick the colour we used, and I picked red, since it went with another sign I’d already designed for all of the classrooms we service. The design morphed into this:
This is the version that finally got approval from my client, though I’ve omitted various steps that involved changes in nomenclature or wording. It’s similar, but very different from my initial proposal. It’s not what I would have done if I were unrestrained, but it’s the best solution for this problem because it is a product of cooperation between myself and my client, and it meets the goals we set out to reach. Now, we have a graphic identity we can use. Every time he calls up for a sign or notice to be made, I have a resource pool I can use to quickly put something together. It’s not very sophisticated, but it’s recognizable, clear and concise.
