All Posts, Graphic Design
There is a point in a designer’s career, that you will, if you haven’t already, come in contact with a client that wants to rule the entire project. They pick on the colors, the layout, and the typeface (Comic Sans anyone?). Everytime you try put in your two sense, you’re shut down. I mean, you wouldn’t hire an mechanic to fix your car and tell him that he is doing it all wrong, would you?
Before you give up and drop every curse word in the book (hopefully after the clients leaves or hangs up the phone) continue reading for ideas on how you can bring some light on a difficult, mindset client.
Education . . . when does this happens?
Before signing the contract! It’d be easy to say that education happens all the time during a design project. While that may be the case, if you haven’t set expectations properly up front, you are probably going to have problems later on. Learning how to educate your clients certainly will be the key of your success on the “battle for designs”. When a project begins, it’s important to establish that you are an expert and that your opinion is grounded in research and professional experience. Why? Because establishing your own credibility is important to getting them to understand that there is more than just a “gut feeling” behind your decisions.
Clearly explain your concept, just after taking the time of listening to the clients concept
Lack of communication and miscommunications can often destroy an entire project. When your client have a concept in mind, you should be able to take their ideas into consideration. They chose you because you are the right person for the job and you must treat it this way. Make sure to listen to their ideas and make sure they listen to yours. And hopefully come to a happy medium.
Your client have a “listening time”, use it wisely
Carefully listen to their idea, immediately after your time has come and you most use it effectively. Explain them why you will like to use certain fonts or how your color scheme would be more effective than the ones they had in mind. Explain your ideas and reasoning carefully. Use the basics; who, what, why and how. Please don’t use your fancy design jargon. Save that for the playground! Act professionally and simple on your explanations, this will increase your chances of having more say with the outcome.
Visual explanation…
You can show them a comparison of the two concepts, their idea and yours. This would require more time and effort but it would help them visually see the difference. Show them books or other examples of good, effective design which would assist helping them gain a broader, more visual idea of design. While showing these examples, follow the same procedure as above, and provide them with precise detail on why and how they work.
A big challenge for any designer is to learn how to manage clients successfully. Educating them has always been the smartest way to maintain good relationships. It is very important that you take the time to do this regularly in order to develop a pleasant experience for yourself and your client.
All Posts
If you’ve been in the business of design for over a year you know that each new client you get is going to be different from the last. Some are more hands on and like to micro-manage, others are so “relaxed” they may take weeks or months to get you material you need to get their design project started/finished. The thing is, you never really know until you start working with them.
The Eager to Get Started Client
These are great at first. They’re so enthused by their vision and business;excited about everything that comes out of your mouth and can’t wait to get the ball rolling. Problems could start arriving as soon as you leave the initial consultation visit. Haven’t heard back from them, no responses in email, and deposit is yet to be paid.
The best way to handle these clients is by setting clear expectations – of them as customers. You set the pace on how the project plan is going to play.
The “I Need it Done Yesterday” Client
You get a call out of the blue from some firm looking to get a new website up and running like now. Whether you take on the project should depend on your current workload but you take it anyway because it’s money. Now that you have, they’re nitpicking everything and what should have been a quick delivery turn around is becoming a nightmare on design street.
When dealing with these types of clients be sure to share your project timeline with them highlighting the go/no-go points that require their acceptance and input.
The “I Trust Your Judgment” Client
Now these could be good and bad depending on how many department heads have decision rights. You’ve got a clear road to do what you need to all the way to the finish line of this project. They haven’t really given you much to work on outside of their logo. But when the time comes to show them the almost finished production they’re not happy with just about everything you did saying they “thought you understood what their direction was.”
The phrase “I trust your judgment” should be your red flag that frequent pulse checks and design reviews will be needed.
The Not-So-Computer-Savvy Client
There are a lot of these out there. Care for them like they’re your one and only. Sometimes these clients have all the ideas to make your project a smooth sailing one. Bullet points, flow charts, great selling examples, workflows, graphics. But they’re all in their head – or at least not in a media format you can use. Trying to walk them through file extractions, email, or other types of technology could be a bit frustrating. But there is hope if you’re within driving distance of them.
Start compiling your own dump folder of easy to follow training material to address your most common questions. You’ll find those training docs will come in handy .
I could go on to name a bunch more, but the moral of this story is communication. It’s up to you as the designer to get into the head (or heads) of those in charge of the business to create something that is a worthy representation of their business. Assuming is never a good option, and neither is procrastination. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
All Posts, Marketing
My kids recently taught me a lesson in how they view the world I’ve put around them. Eating dinner and taking showers aren’t they’re most favorite things to do. But having “lunch” and taking bubble baths are. At first glance the two comparisons don’t seem to be much, but they actually are. It’s all in the wrapping and presentation. Much like how toys are always in bright vibrant colors, and most other products are boring and bland colored.
Consider your current design services. You probably have a website, tri-fold brochure, business card, and maybe a postcard flyer. What I want you to think about or review is how each of those mediums may look to your potential clients. Lets strip away all the marketing views for now, and focus purely on design and eye-candy appeal. Most consumers are impulse buyers. I’d like to separate that into two: visual impulse and conceptual impulse.
Visually your mediums should be entertaining to the eyes when they first see it. Almost telling a story about how much fun they’ll have with this new possible toy. Remember how excited you would get seeing that new commercial for a G.I. Joe action figure? You knew it didn’t move on its own, but seeing it do all those cool moves in the commercial gave you this urge that you had to have it. You visually saw yourself playing with that toy the same way.
A more aggressive approach would be to fine tune some of your mediums for the conceptual business owners. They’ll purchase mainly because they already understand a specific service or product need in their minds. Sure you may offer many design services, but they’re only interested in one. Once you can identify that, it will become your open door to offering other companion services to them.
I would suggest the same for when you setup a package specific for a new potential client. Do a little research and see if you can find out what may be eye-catching to them. If it’s through someone who may be referring you to their associate, ask questions about habits, likes, and what they favor. Use this information to almost customize your approach and re-edit your flyers and media kit to really get that “new toy” mesmerizing effect. Here are some tips:
- Less clutter – It’s easier to grab a potential client’s attention when they don’t have to use too much of their brain or eyes overlooking a lot of content. That goes from websites to business cards.
- Choose to use colors or Not – Bright colors aren’t necessarily always a good thing. Sometimes all white with one accent color could stand out more than a rainbow. However some well placed bright colors have a way of bringing back memories of long-lost toys that we loved when we were younger.
- Vectors or real Pictures – This is another either or cases here. And I’m not talking clip art. If you’re more into vectors then stay there and keep with the theme. Same if you’re using real images. But with real images you can do a lot of easy editing to have so cool effects that could create a visual for a client’s own product.
- Current Trends and Themes – When Transformers came out, big companies were falling over themselves to jump on the bandwagon and cross-promote using the Autobots and their products. If you have time, why not do the same with some of your flyers or brochures or website. It’s sure to get attention and spark conversation. The key would be to tie that in to a specific service on your part though.
Have you used this strategy before? If so I’d like to hear about it. Any other points and comments are also welcome in the fields below.
All Posts, Web Design
One of the biggest mistakes I think in this business is to treat your customer as a one time sale. Or even worse, as a number and not a long-term business relationship. This is actually one of our “theories” that a customer is worth more to us than a one time sale.
Now what are you doing as a designer in terms on client retention? Some designers I know have some sort of medium they use to keep in constant contact with their clients. Some of those tools are:
- Email newsletters
- Snail Mail postcards or advertisements
- Facebook messages
- Twitter mentions
- Quarterly phone calls
Those are all nice, only IF you perform them as necessary and with an expected frequency. There’s also a level of engagement that needs to be monitored per client too. For example, if you have a few clients that respond more to snail mail letters than they do with social media, you may want to save your energy on social media marketing with those in particular and engage with them via postal mail.
The real issue though is actually paying attention to what they’re saying or thinking about their design needs. Some things to think about may be
- When was the last time they updated their website?
- Do they have any new services to add to their brochure or print media?
- Is their email newsletter ready for a design upgrade?
- Is their blog up to date with relevant and new posts?
- Do they need more business cards for newer employees?
I can list out a bunch more but you get the drift. The threat with not listening to your clients is that they’ll end up complaining about their needs. Those complaints may not reach your ears, but a competitor’s ear. I’ll confess to a recent story from me. I created a site for a client maybe about 3 years ago. Updated the site after a year to a whole new look and feel. Client was happy. But I never followed up with them to see how they were feeling about their site, how their business was going, how many leads their site was generating them, etc. Now all of those could have been great reasons to sell them more services and I missed out on the opportunities. So as a result, they found another designer that was in closer contact with them (almost daily) and he created a new website, domain, and all for my client. Unbeknown st to me, the client was since then promoting their new site on all their media. The new site was horrible mix of flash, dated design and layout, and sub par graphics, and using iframes pulling content from the site I had created. I almost fell out of my chair in disbelief on how my client could have preferred this over my work.
Moral of the story is to keep in contact and close ear of your current clients. Their businesses are growing just like yours, and just as your needs change so will theirs. As you add-on more services, pass those service options to your current clients. Even if they’re not in the position to utilize them now, chances are they will be in the future OR know someone who can now and refer them to you. At the end of the day they’d prefer to work with someone they trust over having to start over with someone new.
Have any experience like this in your design firm? Let me know in the comments below.
All Posts, Web Design
One of the things we web designers often talk about when we’re around each other is our client stories. And while I won’t get into most of the topics or details, I do want to highlight a few important ones that are pretty common. Those being, clear understanding of responsibilities of the designer, of the business owner, on-time deliverables, and contract and payment.
I like to refer myself as a junior web designer. This because I haven’t been around for over a decade doing web design, but I have been around long enough to experience the highs and lows of the industry. Especially when it comes to my responsibilities as a web designer. First and foremost, I am to be the authority on such a subject matter when it comes to my clients. I must assume they know nothing, and take the time to adequately discuss anything that doesn’t make sense to the client. I’m not saying that non industry people are handicapped at all. But I do think its unfair to talk a bunch of techno babble under the pretense that a client understand everything I’m talking about. I also believe I have a responsibility:
- To return phone calls or emails in a timely manner.
- Clearly explain my prices and estimate for work to be done
- Ask questions about what the client would like to see done
- Get existing examples of websites & designs that the client likes
- Secure a deposit before work is started
From a client’s side, there can be quite a few things needed that may not become clear until deadlines are approaching. One example is “content.” It is always the business owner’s responsibility to provide content for their website. As a designer, we can easily charge for copyrighting if necessary, but otherwise it’s up to the client to take the time to write out their bios, services, products, prices, and even provide the graphics and logos for the site. In a lot of cases this is where pricing for websites starts to climb. What at first seemed like a $1,500 job has now turned into a $2,600 job after creating graphics, artwork, content, research, and implementation. I can’t stress how important this is because of how it will seriously drag a project that would normally take 2 weeks into several months of back and forth missed calls and unanswered emails.
Milestones for each web project will vary, but each project has them. From getting a contract signed with initial payment, to full site testing and launching, there are some goals that need to be tracked and reached before further work is started. Most designers will keep the client informed with over estimated time lines. This is not because we’re lazy or anything, its to give enough time to get things in order or received from the client with a realistic turnaround time for completion. If we think we’re going to be late on a deadline, its our responsibility to inform the client. If the client can’t seem to finalize something – they need to understand how that affects the overall time line for their project.
My last point is securing a contract and payment. Let me skip to payments because this is dearest to just about every freelancer out there. We need this upfront not because we need to pay our overdue light bill. Its more so because we need to get you truly interested in getting us the materials we need to really undertake a project. If we don’t secure a preliminary deposit from you, we’ll most likely be waiting for months before hearing anything from you. I won’t generalize that statement to everyone, but I will say most. Each designer has their own way of breaking down a project’s payment percentages, but their important to sticking to the deadlines.
Now as for a contract; this is important to all parties. A working contract protects the designer for their work, what is fully expected of them, and also the client for what is eventually owned/owed to them.
