Design is more than a service industry.

Roger Johansson has a great site with insightful commentary, but one of his more recent musings touched upon a debate we have been having at work recently; his thesis was about the ten things a company should know before building a website. He references another designer, Andy Budd, who recently asked his site visitors what 3 things we, as designers, wished our clients knew about the web that generated a lot of input from the community. Both of these highlight the issue of how to approach your role with your clients. Are we merely a service industry, taking orders and fulfilling them, or are we providing more valuable counsel, such as an attorney or financial planner?

Having worked as a artist (read: layout, illustrator, graphic designer, photographer, video editor, compositor, web designer, programmer, chief cook & bottle washer) for nearly twenty years I continually assess where the industry is and in which direction it may be moving towards. My thoughts on this matter tend more towards the latter; we should be providing counsel for the client and their business requirements. Actively engaging with them and the goals of the business rather than simply fulfilling an order for one creative development project.

Taking a proactive approach to provide the best creative solution for their current business goals helps create a relationship with the client that can span years. After all our clients are looking to increase their returns by contracting with us to market their products and/or services. If the solution is a great design but fails to meet the business objectives than that solution has failed. All too often designers tend to think that we are artists and the work has to be true to the artistic vision…this would be wrong. What we do is not art and the only thing we need to be true to is our clients business requirements for the specified contract.

Other studios tend to take pejorative approach to client management when working on a client's project and consider it a chore to explain their creative visions to the bourgeoisie. I have had this happen to me, personally while I was employed at Disney and at Hallmark by external design firms. This is an unacceptable approach to any business plan and contrary to the way we work with our clients and their projects.

The comments to these blogs, in my opinion, may be of more value than the actual articles due to their unfettered opinions. I am not saying they are necessarily correct, but they highlight some of the disparity faced by certain designers and studios when approaching web development, or even general design projects. Overcoming these perceived divides is a simple matter of open dialogue. Consistent and accurate two-way communication can avoid these dilemmas and that is how we will work with you.