The Secret to Great Client-Designer Relationships…Make Them Money!

What is Good Design? Good Design is Design that Makes Your Client Money

If you ask a designer what makes a good design they’ll rattle off a list of impressive sounding terms: good contrast, effective use of type, good use of white space, logical hierarchy and so on.

Ask a client and they’ll tell you one thing – it needs to increase sales.

For some designers, that is a hard pill to swallow. You may think your design totally kicks ass but if the market says otherwise, you failed. By failed, I don’t mean artistically, I mean failed in not meeting the goals of the client. You client doesn’t care about your design theories – this is a business, and businesses must make money or die. Make your clients money and they will take you very seriously.

You Don’t Know Everything

So you finished the new full-page ad and sent it to the printers. It looks amazing. It stands out from the rest of the ads in the magazine in a very good way. It pops. It sizzles. It rocks big time. Then nothing happens. No calls, no increased sales, no spike in website visitor traffic. What happened? It doesn’t make sense, the design was perfect, some of your best work.

You’ve just gotten the most important lesson you’ll ever learn as a designer. Just because you think it’s good, just because it follows every design theory to the letter, doesn’t mean it will perform.

Don’t take it personally. There’s a good chance your client thought is was good too.

If you’re a bad designer, a wannabe, you’ll blame the customers. Obviously they were just too stupid to understand how awesome your ad was. If they weren’t such a bunch of unsophisticated country bumpkins this ad would have worked perfectly. You’re not going to lower your standards just to get these idiots to buy.

Do this and you’re gone. The client will drop you quick and you deserve it. You’re not being paid to express yourself, to win awards or to show off to your peers. You are being paid to make money for your client. Period.

If you’re a good designer, a rockstar, you’ll blame yourself. You made the comps, you steered the client to a specific approach, and it was you that misjudged the market. You’re going to deconstruct that ad and figure out why it didn’t work. Was it too avant-garde or clash with proven customer reading patterns?  Was the message wrong for the magazines demographics? Was it pitching a solution to a problem that doesn’t even exist? Did you forget to include a clear call to action? Whatever it was, you’re not going to repeat that mistake again. It’s time for a different approach.

Do this and you’ll be getting more work down the road. Your client doesn’t expect you to hit it out off the ballpark every time. But they do expect you to picking up a good share of doubles and to take their needs seriously.

You’re Not Flipping Burgers

A good designer should care deeply about their client’s success. All clients start out great and deserve your emotional and professional commitment. This is not flipping burgers at McDonald’s. People are putting their business and reputation in your hands. That’s a special relationship that must be respected.

More often than not, your client has the same dependence on you as you do to your mechanic, doctor or lawyer. If they didn’t they wouldn’t need your services or be willing to pay serious money to secure them. It’s an unequal situation where your screw-ups have a profound impact on your client’s business. If your ad, poster, mailer or brochure doesn’t get to the printer on time they could lose thousands. A website that never goes live leaves them completely out of the online competitive landscape. Weak branding will leave them vulnerable to competitors and slowly drain their coffers as potential customers silently turn away and seek other alternatives.

Just as a doctor’s misdiagnosis could cost you your life, a mechanic’s botched repair can leave you stranded on the highway, and a lawyers misreading of the law could lead to jail or huge fines, so does a designer bad choices affect their client. Bad design won’t kill your client, but it may kill their business and they know it. That’s why clients are a little anxious about these things. They know what’s on the line and how much power they are giving you.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A designer earns their respect daily. Every phone call, email, comp, and revision adds or detracts from your street cred. How you handle a client’s request matters. How you deal with a crisis matters. In fact, it’s the crisis situations that make or break your business. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, if you choke when you need to shine, your client will make a serious note of it. Do it twice and you’re gone.

So if you want respect then try doing something to deserve it – like make them money. If you want your client to hang on your every word then give them a reason to listen by delivering results. If you want to be treated like a god then make marketing miracles and turn your pixels, vectors and code into money in their pocket.

Do that and you won’t be one of those whiny designers with a list of floundering clients that drive them crazy.

File Under: Making Your Clients Happy – How to Build Good Client-Designer Relationships – Client-Designer Dynamics – How to Be Taken Seriously as a Graphic Designer – How to Be Respected for Your Graphic Design Skills – Why Your Clients Don’t Respect Your Design Talents – Getting Respect as a Web Designer