Tips for Stronger Designer - Client Relationships. Part I

My eight-year experience running a graphic design practice, has provided me with a lot of insight on interactions with corporate clients. Simultaneously, as part of my design firm’s projects I manage independent creative professionals on a daily basis, both as individuals and in teams. Standing at the meeting point of these two worlds, I have learned to understand how these very different but key players, the client and the subcontractorctor, function together on a typical design process.

As designers, becoming aware of the things that are potential competitive advantages, will help us build strong relationships with our clients. 
In this series of postings, I am going to share some of what I find to be great practices in this area. While some of them may seem obvious, being able to use them on an day-to-day context is a skill to master: when the contract has been signed, the project has already started, and there is pressure from other projects, fatigue and stress, they are too often disregarded.
 
Here are the first three:
 
1. Make yourself available. This means of course being reachable during business hours, both via phone and email, but also having the flexibility to adapt to our client’s unexpected needs.
Behind every project there is often a string of anxious people waiting to get the job done, who are themselves dealing with considerable pressure and stress. In this context the designer should be someone who helps relieve the team from that pressure: there is enormous value in that for any business.
Since an independent designer is not an employee, there will always be a level of uncertainty on the client’s end as to whether or not the designer will respond to an unexpected request, especially if this affects the designer’s schedule. In my experience, a client is always thankful when the designer responds and is there to take care of these “small” things. Clients always keep in mind the person who replied to that urgent email or did that last-minute edit, even when the project had already been closed.  That designer is perceived as someone that the client can rely on, not only to create effective communication for their business, but also as someone who reduced their stress level when they needed it most.
 
2. Promise less, deliver more. Deadlines will always be tight, most projects will be needed ASAP, urgency is the norm on graphic and web design, but no matter how tempting it is to say yes to everything, a designer must be realistic about what can be accomplished within a specific time frame.
Deadlines are often set up based on business goals such as a product release, an upcoming trade show, a company meeting, etc. These deadlines include milestones related mostly to the businesses’ internal operations, and Marketing and Project managers are familiar with the amount of work required to achieve each one of them. However, when it comes to estimating the time needed for design and media production (for example: printing an annual report, testing a website before launching, etc.), it is often a miscalculated after-thought. It is up to the designer to be clear about how much time is needed to complete what he or she is being asked to do and to explain why. Taking the time to break-down the project into steps and think how long each one of them will take is a must; and the designer’s workload (other projects), which the client cannot know in advance, also comes into play here. Once there is a realistic time frame, allowing for a little extra margin is also advisable in case of any unforeseen delays. One of the worst impressions that a client can get is not having the job delivered on time.  To avoid this, the designer must be in control of his/her own timeline as much as possible.
 
3. Be a problem solver, even if is not your problem. This has proven to be a huge factor for clients to appreciate a subcontracted designer. Here is a typical situation: a client calls in the middle of the day because they are having trouble opening or editing a file, usually created by someone else. They have already spent almost an hour trying to figure out what the problem is, and their boss is getting impatient. Although they hesitated to do it —they didn’t want to be disruptive or perhaps wanted to save money— they call the designer they usually work with and ask for help. For the designer this is certainly a distraction, but he or she takes five minutes to look into it and solve the problem anyway, then goes back to the client explaining what the issue was in a friendly, relaxed tone. The client is happy and can now focus on other things. Again, the designer is a stress-reliever and a team member.
I have always been deeply thankful to designers and developers who have done this kind of favor to me. As if their willingness to help wasn’t enough to be thrilled about, when I asked how much I owed them all of them told me: “You owe me nothing, that took me only a couple of minutes”.
 
As a client, these designers are at the top of my list when I need to hire for a new project. As a designer, the same approach has been exponentially rewarding. With a small effort I cultivated loyalty and a bond with my customers that goes beyond formal courtesy.

The (very) Graphic Design Business

Design. Only reading or hearing this word triggers very particular thoughts and feelings on me. Through more than ten years of working in this industry, design has become more than a passion, more than my profession and more than a means of living to me.

Design is a challenging partner: elusive, always demanding, in constant need of renewal. Incredibly complex on the inside, as simple and as intelligible as it can be —as it has to be— on the outside. And in spite of all its convoluted dimensions and exigences, design lasts, remains and rewards.

Graphic design —understood as web/interactive and print visual design— is my area of expertise and it has its own cultural and economical characteristics that set it apart from other design fields.

First of all, graphic design is the most democratic of all design areas. For better or for worse, technology and the need for massive immediate visual communication have made graphic design tools available to almost anyone, and almost anyone even slightly interested in the subject can “assume the form” of a Graphic Designer, producing anything from a logo, to an entire website.

Second, graphic design has the highest demand. Unlike architectural or industrial design for example, where projects are always a long term task and involve high production costs, graphic design calls for immediacy and responsiveness (even more so when it comes to web design). The amount of visual communication needed in today’s world is astronomical and continues to expand, to get and idea of this all we need to do is to count the amount of different screens (interfaces) that we look at or interact with, on any given day.

Third, democratization and increasing demand for graphic design during the last three decades, generated an exponential growth of creative professionals. This impacted the profession both positively and negatively: while it helped graphic design to claim and establish its own ground as a discipline and as business, the boom of graphic design firms, solo practitioners and graphic design graduates also created an oversupply and a wide spectrum of pricing. As a result, graphic design is nowadays perceived by many as something of a fashion, certainly as a commodity and sadly, as a hobby.

During my career, I’ve had to overcome numerous misconceptions about graphic design and Graphic Designers. Finding an identity and success has not been a walk in the park. Through the years, I have experienced the pressure and over-sized egos of a big ad agency environment with its ridiculously tight deadlines, but those long hours included many invaluable teachings. Becoming an entrepreneur, I’ve had to deal with even longer (if more rewarding) hours, imprecise briefings, wildly underpriced budgets, tough clients, great clients, exciting and often unpredictable projects. More importantly, I have also learned how make the switch from “creative mode”, where all the focus, guts and brain are absorbed by the thrill of coming up with something new, something that wasn’t there before, to “business mode”, where time is money and every single action demands efficiency and purpose.

My goal with this blog is to share all sides of the equation. I want creative professionals to become better at making this “switch”, to fully understand and to be eager to see things from a client’s perspective, which is critical. Becoming business-minded is as challenging as it can be for any creative professional, but is key to success; if you ask me, the only possible way. I also want to throw some light into the design process, so clients have a better understanding of what happens behind the scenes.

Few professions if any, ever have the need to justify themselves, they are self-explanatory. I’m convinced that bridging the gap between the business and creative mindset will help enormously to change outdated and unrealistic ideas about graphic design. This would multiply the number of high-end Graphic Designers that will also deliver and be more congruent with today’s market exigences and reality.

Iliana Rabago