Trust thy Designer
Trust… that little “T” word that rolls off tongues so frequently. Do you ever use it? I do… a lot. As a Designer, you need to know clients can place their trust in you. If someone asks you to design for them, and you get the impression you aren’t fully trusted, you will have problems.
Scenario:
You go to the Doctor because you have a few concerns, and want some answers. The Doctor gives you advice and perhaps even offers a solution in the form of a prescription. Relief washes over you. Do you question your Doctor? Unlikely. You leave there grateful that you got the help you needed.
Why do you trust your Doctor?
There are many reasons why you trust your Doctor. Firstly, you know he is qualified, and you may have even seen the qualifications framed up on the wall of the surgery. You recognise that your Doctor is a professional, and a skilled practitioner of medicine.
Let’s consider another profession for a moment – Designer.
On the whole… I think a Designer needs to work a little harder to earn someones trust. Let’s say you have a degree, great portfolio, and maybe even a string of happy clients – that doesn’t always guarantee confidence from the client. Often, there can be a lack of trust.
You will get challenged a lot on your decisions. Some jobs just command a lot more respect, like I have outlined with the “trusted Doctor” scenario. Is an experienced Designer any less of a professional? I think that clients feel the need to challenge some things because they just don’t understand the process (or they probably don’t realise there even is one).
I can understand that it is a little harder to trust a Designer because let’s face it… design is subjective, just like art. But do you need to know about medicine to be able to trust your doctor? No, you don’t. So… do you really need to understand design to be able to trust a Designer? Using the same logic, no.
Lack of trust – low morale = poor results
Absolute trust = great results
If you choose a Designer to work for you, then you should approach everything with an open mind, and have faith that they will deliver. You chose them. I’m not saying that you must kneel before your master to receive your logo, and just take what you are given. But before sending that email to your Designer with some negative feedback, why not try take a step back, breathe, and try see things from an outside perspective?
Every reputable Designer that I know strives to produce great work for every project. Your work is your reputation, and how your peers judge your abilities. Personally, I would never send something on to a client without being confident that it is my best work. I am my own worst critic, and the people that know me would concur. I obsess over my work with almost OCD like tendencies, so you can guarantee everything I work on gets the full attention it deserves.
When you feel you are trusted, you will always produce better work. Feeling you are trusted will mean you can worry less about making the boss happy, and can focus on doing great work. Having to worry about impressing the boss, or the client, will ultimately choke the life out of your creativity.
What are your thoughts?
Related articles:
- One client, one logo.
- Design should be traumatic
- Do you really need a degree to work as a Designer?
- Misconceptions about Web Designers
- Designer Vs Client Typographic Poster Designs
Hey, my cousin’s friend is a student nurse and I’d like her to remove my kidney stones. Would you just have the odd look and see how she’s getting on, make sure she doesn’t mess it up?
Your seem kinda expensive, the other guy said he could do all my branding and a website for 1/3 of what your are asking.
Or my fav of the week which I overheard while at NWRC; “I need this to be branded and look really slick and professional, there will be people from all over the world seeing this and it has to be top notch. I’ll be back in 20 minutes and will need to send it right away, It needs to be simple so don’t get all creative!”.
The accessibility of design gives everyone an opinion and combined with our desire to make things look easy can give the wrong impression. If a client fails the interview I don’t work with them. I love experienced clients:
convert A into B by C for X.
They hire you because they like you, what you do and trust you to deliver the right thing, on time and on budget.
Inexperienced clients:
need by C for <X/3, something done which is somewhat like A transformed into something else they'll know when they see B.
This approach always leads to delays and budget overruns all of which are the designers fault for not being able to deliver the thing that they knew they wanted. They don't need a designer they need a priest.
Exactly! A lot of clients don’t seem to realise that it is a two way thing!
I think you are right too about the accessibility and simplicity of design making it seem easy. People who think design is easy are probably the same people that say “Psychology… sure that’s just common sense, isn’t it?”.
Thanks for an interesting article. Maybe the trust issue relates to the qualification process. To follow on from your example, most people know that becoming a doctor requires years of intense study, internships, work placements etc and that the whole process is monitored by a strict governing body, so that you can’t go out into the world, call yourself a doctor and get a job without proving that you know what you’re talking about.
But design is a whole other ball game. You don’t need to go to college and get a degree to call yourself a designer. To be honest, even somebody who knows nothing at all about design can call themselves a designer. This isn’t a problem amongst the design community as most creatives can accurately judge another designer’s skills based on the quality of work in their portfolio. But when dealing with a customer who doesn’t have these instincts, it’s only natural that the designer is going to have to find other ways to earn the customer’s trust.
You are quite right Jo, the qualification thing is definitely one reason why some clients might lack trust. And another reason is that a lot of clients may have had bad experiences with “Cowboy Designers”… the ones that take their money and throw them back a really cheap, low quality design. When clients have previously worked with these sort of “Designers”, it will always make it harder for them to be able to trust another Designer (regardless of their skill and experience).
But if a client chooses you to design for them though, then that is like them saying they do trust you, otherwise they would have chose someone else. So when they start having doubts mid-project… that can be very frustrating! Before any work is started you need to know that they have total trust in you, and will listen to your direction.
I had this exact discussion with my mom and my wife yesterday when I was trying to explain my dilemma with setting appropriate work rates.
Trust is the number one problem between clients and designers. I think we may have gotten into this problem by the “I have a nephew who has a computer…” issue. Everybody thinks they can do it, yet the results of inexperience leads to mediocrity.
Great post…now we as designers just need to step up to the plate to try and change perception
I hear you, Chris! I have had that discussion many times before too! People outside the industry really don’t understand the levels of stress/frustration associated with creative jobs!
Everything is easier once trust is established in a working relationship. I don’t think I have met/spoken to a Designer yet who would disagree. There are ways to earn a clients trust, but to even do that they need to be open to you, and your ideas before you can show them.
EXCELLENT! This is the kind of thing I try to portray to my own clients, very well said
If you haven’t seen this already… it’s fantastic. Sums it all up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfprIxNfCjk
Hi Mark!
First of all, let me say, I LOVE your new blog design! I’ve been MIA this summer, so I haven’t stopped by as much as I would have liked, and this is my first time seeing it. I really love the focus on typography — really beautiful.
Your post brings up so many great points — and it’s really the hardest part of being a designer (in my opinion). I don’t think it’s so much that people don’t trust us. I think it’s more a misunderstanding of what we do. I often get the feeling that clients hire us, not to create a beautiful layout, or come up with a creative concept — but to EXECUTE their idea or their vision. They want us to take what is in their heads and use our technical skills to put it on paper, or put it on the web. They don’t want us making the design decisions. Not because they don’t trust us, but because they know what they want, and they think they know what is best for their project.
On one hand, I get this. If I hire an interior designer, I expect them to take into consideration my taste and my color and fabric preferences when designing my house. I don’t expect them to create a room in THEIR favorite colors — I expect them to think about what I want when they are picking paint colors and choosing furniture.
The difference between what we do as graphic designers, and what an interior designer might do, though, is the final audience. What people fail to realize is that interior designers are creating for their client, and their client only. A web designer or a print designer isn’t designing for their client. They are designing for their client’s clients. If my client, Bob, likes the color blue, it shouldn’t matter. What should matter is what color Bob’s clients like. I realize that’s a simplified example, but I think that’s where the breakdown lies. People forget that we aren’t just here to create beautiful design — we are here to help our clients communicate with THEIR clients. We have the expertise to speak to a particular target audience, to encourage certain actions, or to create something that will bring in new potential clients.
I have found that if I explain this to my clients — that the decisions we are making need to be the best decisions for their company, for their business, and for their clients — even though those decisions may not agree completely with the client’s initial vision — I usually get a good response. In the end, when the designer and the client are on the same side — both working for the good of the company — the client tends to be much more open-minded, and more trusting in their designer’s capable hands.
Hi Manda!
Thanks very much for the compliment!! I think my site is one that does provoke polar opinions. The focus of this new site is definitely on the typography and the user-experience, which I think I got right this time!
You are absolutely right too, Manda! I think a lot of clients do expect you to be able to carve out their idea and do exactly what they ask, without stopping and thinking if they should ask your opinion.
I do still think that trust is at the root of all these issues though. For instance, if a client has an idea of their own, then they may be reluctant to surrender to your idea, as the Designer, unless they trust in your abilities and can have faith that your idea will work better than theirs when implemented.
I do agree with you that trust is the real issue here. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think part of the problem may be that our work is so subjective. If I am paying to have my car fixed, I can trust the mechanic, because at the end of the process, I’ll either have a working car or I will not. If my car works, I’ll pay him happily. If not, I know to argue or hold payment. If I am paying for a surgery, I’ll know the doctor has been successful if I come out alive and heal well.
Our clients really have no way to gauge if we have been successful with our design. All they can do is look at our work, and decide if they like it. If it appeals to them. The real measure of success won’t come until later — do the designs bring in new business, do clients react well to the designs, etc. And, even after time passes, and analytic results show if the design has been successful, those numbers could still be skewed by a good/bad product, good/bad customer service, etc.
On one hand, it seems like it would be easier to trust a designer. After all, it’s just a poster, a website, or a brochure — not your car. Not your life. But, with plumbing, mechanics, painting, or even doctoring, it’s easy to tell if you got what you paid for — if you hired the right guy. With design, it’s just not that cut-and-dry — so it’s hard to trust that the designer really knows what they are doing. Because as in all fields, there are talented, hard-working people, and then there are posers and scammers — and when clients know so little about what good design is, or what a successful design looks like — I can see why it would be hard for them to put all of their faith — and all of their money — in our hands without some reservations.
(no matter how hard I try, I can’t manage to keep my comments short!! I’m so sorry!)
Yes, exactly! This is what I was getting at!
I have had clients before that have passed my work on to their Designer friend, so that he can pass judgement on whether I done a good job or not. Try explaining to the client why that doesn’t work, without sounding patronising or arrogant – it is not easy.
I think blogging is one of the only things that stops me from going Postal! So much frustration and stress associated with creative work that you are never told about when you’re studying!
Great subject for a post Mark, you raised some good points and the comments were interesting to read too – it’s certainly a subject people have lots of views on. I think trust is such an important topic, not only does the client have to trust the designer, which shouldn’t be too hard if they take the process of finding a designer seriously. To do this they need to ask people they trust for recommendations, check out those designers’ portfolios to see which suits them and also to find out if the designer’s working method fits with theirs.
However, I believe one of the main issues is that many clients lack trust in their own judgement, so rather than going through the correct process of finding a designer, they take shortcuts which leads to hiring a designer they don’t fully trust, so instead of letting the designer do their job, they feel they have to steer the design process to get what they want, but in doing this they’re negating the main benefits of hiring a professional – their experience and judgement.
Yeah you are right, Paul! When someone hires you it should be because they want you to tell them what you know, and not because they feel they could use you as a Mac slave to carve out whatever you are told.
There have been many occasions where I have tried to figure out what the issue may be with a particular project, and I often arrived at the same conclusion – lack of trust.
This a nice article and I like the blog design