The Design Disconnect
“Then one day, you graduate into a world of bank brochures and powerpoint templates where you are forced to actively push your creative visions through peer and client critique who are all trying to turn your ideas into something else or make a chinese menu out of it.”
I hate graphic design.
Ok, that’s a bit of an overstatement just to get your attention, but I am definitely a healthy dose of frustrated towards the profession as a whole.
See, I think every designer or artist providing a service knows the trials and tribulations of client feedback. If you are anything like me, you have this scene in your head where you show the client a polished design you have strategically thought through and they erupt into a fit of appreciation:
“This is PERFECT! I’m going to pay you double for your genius and insight!”
Which of course, never happens. The likely outcome is that they want it to POP more and the logo to be larger for half the price. Oh, and they also need it ASAP.
ASAP: A term that people with no concept of time management use. The correct procedure for requests like this is to sit on the request for a while and if the requester asks for it, reply: “I have a bunch of other ASAPs before yours. Sorry, I’ll get to it ASAP.”
Some food for thought: The Nike logo was originally designed by Carolyn Davidson for $35 and the client didn’t even like it. He didn’t. even. like it.
This idea of petty subjectivity towards the value of design and how everybody wants the next big idea, but nobody really wants to take the risk of a new idea is the basis of my current frustration toward graphic design. How do you charge an hourly rate for an idea? How do you put a number value on a subjective logo? I would say many issues regarding these pitfalls are solved by compromises from both the designer and client. With that said, there is a fine line that is easily crossed when the compromising starts to hurt the end product.
Ji Lee – The Transformative Power of Personal Projects from Ji Lee on The 99 Percent.
I have watched this video dozens of times, and the story Ji Lee tells at A Behance Conference is a perfect example of people getting weedsy.
WEEDSY: The act of calling out meaningless details of a project and adding completion barriers for no reason other than to hear yourself talk. i.e. “Being down in the weeds of a project.”
It’s like when you ask someone what they think of a design. Naturally that person is going to profess the things they feel would make it better. If you put the Nike logo brief in front of 100 people before it was the Nike logo, you would have an infinite amount of variations for the Nike logo and every single person thinks they are right, and they are. Plus, they all would charge a different hourly rate. And who is right?
So, why do I personally continue designing if it makes me so bitter all the time?
It took me quite awhile to get to the root of this answer. Then, one day, it landed on my lap in the form of an answer Dan Stiles gave on GrainEdit.com. The moment I read it, my perspective changed.
(in regards to agency life) “… at a firm you are turning out Design Product on an assembly line (and) you usually aren’t actually making your own design. Whoever has their name on the door is working hard to bring in high dollar work in order to keep the machine running, which often means taking monied clients who don’t really want great design. Great design is risky. Many clients prefer simply good design, which is far lower risk.”
This answer generated such a large response that it prompted him to write more extensively on the subject. He goes on to say:
“There are two kinds of design. Design as a service and design as art. Design as a service is just like being a plumber or any other trade. Someone calls, you fix their pipes and you fix them as best you can, then you collect the money and move on. No matter how you slice it you’re fixing pipes, not building the Sistine Chapel. The client doesn’t want the Sistine Chapel, they just want their toilet to work. That is 99% of the paying work that’s out there. Don’t expect deep creative satisfaction from design as a service, expect a good job and a paycheck.”
So, I finally had a name for the thing I remembered enjoying. Design as art.
See, Graphic Design Education is a funny thing. You are introduced to all these techniques, designers, artists, movements, programs, styles, illustrations, etc.. You are creatively pushed every day from peers and professors who all have the communal objective to create the most witty and ground breaking solutions possible. Then one day, you graduate into a world of bank brochures and powerpoint templates where you are forced to actively push your creative visions through peer and client critique who are all trying to turn your ideas into something else or make a chinese menu out of it.
CHINESE MENU: When a client combines aspects of each of the presented designs and makes one ULTRA MEGA DESIGN. The end result is usually mediocre at best with no clear vision.
Can you imagine any other profession where you are paid an arbitrary amount of money to determine what someone else is visually thinking of, create it, and then convincingly sell it back to them? That’s like a car salesman who builds your used card on the spot… within your budget. Do I dare use the cliche example of how you would never tell your Doctor how to fix your ailment? Cause a client is sure as hell going to tell you that according to a distant relative, his logo in yellow is a much better solution for his eye care establishment.
It has been my experience that new, risky, innovative design can only come from having full to %90 creative control over something. And I also think this is made much more difficult when someone else is footing the bill or when you have to answer to more than 3 people at one time. It’s difficult enough having to sell an idea to one person who makes the decisions, much less a room of people who all feel obligated to earn their paycheck by making the next safety-concious weedsy suggestion.
I also don’t want to insinuate that I know everybody’s business better than they do. Because I don’t. Ultimately you are designing the things that define them, not you. It’s not about me, the all knowing designer. You can only offer your professional opinion, push for compromise, and then carry out demands.
So, for the near future, Service Design at work & Art Design at home.
P.S. Frank Chimero talks on this concept in much more depth and intelligence. His video is below. He is also writing a book and I’m excited about it.
Andy Kleeman
Excellent post Ross, really enjoyed reading this, well done!
Alexander Charchar
Hi Ross, I enjoyed this, thank you :)
I think you’re right for the most part – design that is done for a client is never going to be the same as design done for the designer. The client will push their own tastes onto the job.. no, let me rephrase that – the client will push onto the job what they think their tastes define. More often than not when a client says they want something “to pop” it’s their way of saying “something is nagging at me, but I’m not sure what, so I’ll use some moronic term and hope you get what I mean.” Which is why it’s almost never possible to make them happy after such a comment. They don’t have the language or education or experience to truly explain what it is they are after.
So I do agree with you there.
But on the other hand – if you’re able to fully justify what you’re doing, if you’re able to truly get at the heart of what the client means when they ask for something to ‘pop’, if you’re able to bring them along on the journey (a phrase I kind of hate, but had to use) and get them excited about the problem you are solving (their problem, of course. But, sometimes a client doesn’t really know what their problem actually is, they just come to us with what they think their problem is), then I think the 100% creative freedom rate you suggest is a little exaggerated.
When designers have 100% “creative freedom” i dont think they can truly produce something wondrous. That turns them into artists, not designers. Don’t you often work best when you have a set of restrictions within which to work? It gives you a wall to paint on. To me, 100% creative freedom seems to lead to the wrong kind of solutions to the wrong kind of problems, in which the designer tries to spend all their effort trying to prove to the world how smart they are. I think when a good designer is given a restriction, they are being given nitros and will burn through to brilliance.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you 100%. I think designer as artists is a brilliant idea and something I’m working towards myself. I think it’s when innovative, interesting work occurs. However, I dont think designer as artist can (often) produce brilliant client work. However, designer as artist can definitely produce brilliant work that is sold to customers. We need to earn the right to get what is often perceived as 100% creative freedom.
And as always, if you’re client’s aren’t the kind you want to work with, stop working with them :)
(oh, and I’m sure it isn’t quite what you were going for, but when a designer says they want creative freedom, it’s a crude way of saying “I dont want to aim at their audience, use their language or consider their needs – I’m brilliant how I am and in what I produce!”)
Ross Moody
@ Alex: I agree 100%. For follows function. I think it has just been my experience that the majority of clients are looking for a pixel pusher. Not a visual thinker. Which is totally fine. But when you are investing time and energy and tons of thought into something for their benefit, and it is dismissed even after explaining why it’s relevant, that’s frustrating. “I’m paying you. Do what I want.” So I think what I’m getting at is bad unappreciative clients suck. That is all.
Steve D
Interesting thoughts here Ross, I think these are feelings most designers are familiar with having from time to time.
I think this goes back to the bigger issue at hand. Since Photoshop and similar became available to most people who own a computer, many people feel that they have the ability to turn out a design. To this end, you can look around online and see some design that is deliberately against tradition and rules, possibly bordering on art in places perhaps. The design itself may have no function in many many ways, but if it communicates because it makes the viewer feel something, then it works. It is the conveying of emotion and connection that we are looking to achieve. This is where the success of something can be judged without subjectivity as it either will communicate or it won’t and in the business world this is often measured in sales.
I hear much dismissing of design education these days, about how you can learn it all online, but I still believe a degree of natural aptitude and a good education is still important to underpinning any designers work. Someone can learn how to use Photoshop, but that doesn’t necessarily give them the tools to be creative. They are mostly in your head. Your design education helps you work out what a good idea is and how to form it visually. It also gives you time to experiment, backing up your design decisions with knowledge of the history and forefathers of the craft for company. Of course the workplace is a very different animal, it likes compromise, and enjoys a tasty chunk of pixel pushing for good measure. There is no reason we shouldn’t compromise on a clients vision, and in reality yes we are often trying to make things look “less bad” than creating outstanding work, but what we often hope for is a chance to help them sell their services in a better way. What you can always fall back on (through experience and education) is knowing if something is well suited to a client. They might disagree (as in your Nike example) but sometimes it’s worth explaining why you believe something works, often clients will listen and will come on board. If you get high and mighty too soon with a client though, they may not respect your tone.
I don’t buy all this “problem solving” attitude to design, as I’m not sure that defines our role terribly well. The difference here is the conceptualising and output of ideas. Some people have good ideas, others bad, but not all those who have good ideas are designers. Why? Because they don’t necessarily have visual technical craft to make that work as a piece of design. This is where (like a doctor or mechanic) they turn to someone for help. What a designer does is turn those ideas into a convincing visual communication suitable for its intended audience. Call that a problem if you will, but it’s lack of definition is what created the blurred boundaries and allows for creative thinking in order to form the best solutions.
To run another horribly obvious car analogy, if I go to my mechanic and say “actually can you put my engine on the roof of my car?” my mechanic says “why?” and I reply “because I think it looks good!” this shows that we can bring subjectivity into almost anything, even though naturally I respect my mechanics wise words when he tells me it is maybe not the best idea. Clients often like to tell us what to do because they want to feel like they are getting something for their money, sometimes this is OK but sometimes we have to say “look I’m not going to work with you”, this is part of life and if they want someone to do it for tiny money in a day then let them do it, I would always wish them the best.
In short I agree with what you’re saying, though I think in many ways we could and maybe should work more to have the respect of a mechanic or similar to be given good briefs and then left to interpret them in the most positive way possible for our clients.
Joe-burger
Really great article Ross! Very insightful and smart yet funny
Allie
Seriously one of my favorite blog posts ever. Thanks for sharing, Ross. You Rock.
Bharat KV
Ha ha… thats the frustration every designer goes thru and finally compromises. But compromise at the cost of your talent is a crime. Thats where Personal Projects and Initiatives could be handy…