The WHAT and HOW in design: leaving your project in the hands of professionals
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006
When a professional relationship between a client and a designer begins, there are certain ways that will be helpful to achieve the best result. One of the guidelines to keep a project rolling in effectively and harmonically is to understand the function of the “WHAT” and “HOW” in design.
The “WHAT” stands for the concept and what the client needs for his project. If you are a client, you are ultimately the one who needs to know what your business needs and what you want to achieve with the project. “What feelings should be represented?”, “Who is your target audience?” These are some of the usual questions we do to a client when we start a new project. The better the client knows what his or her business needs, the better the result will always be. Sometimes, we get clients calling our door who still don’t really know what they want for their new web site or corporate image. We pass them a few questions about their needs and they answer something like: “I’ll leave this to you”. In this case, we tell them to think about it better and come back to us with more information. We are designers, and our real task is to find the right way to give shape to their business needs and goals, not to define them. When a client knows exactly “WHAT” he needs for his project then 50% of the success is gained, because we will always find a way to come with the best design for the project.
The “HOW” stands for the process, the way to develop the design and the way the designer manages to achieve the client’s needs in the best way possible. This includes a process where knowledge, tools, practice and other factors are involved. It is supposed to be the reason why a client decides to give their design project to a professional instead of doing it himself. Sometimes, the clients forget that “the way to do the things” is something for the designer to determine. When they are not satisfied with the first sample they get, they panic and start giving concrete orders on the way to design. They try to monitor the design as if they have a “remote control pencil”, instead of telling us where is exactly the problem or what they feel is not working. They start moving objects and colors around as if design was about making puzzles or playing around with Photoshop. Honestly, design is not about that and, from our experience, things never work that way. A designer is a person who will find a way to make things work within the client’s needs and requirements. To be able to do this years of experience and knowledge in different techniques are necessary such as geometry, color balance, distribution of space, programming, etc… Apart from all this, a good designer will be aware of new trends, marketing and design, and the effect of images, symbols, proportions and colors on the human psyche and it’s commercial projection. He will know how to pick the right image to the needs of your concept and will know how to take it to terms with the right techniques. That is exactly what a designer does everyday.
Let’s put it this way: if you were building your new house, would you tell the architect where to put the walls and start playing around with the columns and structures? That would be pretty erratic. It would be more clever to tell him what kind of house you want, how many rooms or floors you want, what kind of requirements it has, and then let the professionals find the way to give you the best solution for your building. If you see the result and you don’t like the way some things are look for a certain reason or you need more space here and there or one more bathroom, you should tell the architect: “Hey, I need more space, I want a new room and I’m gonna need another bathroom”. But I don’t think you should tell the architect how to mess with the walls or where to install the pipes, unless you are an architect yourself. Very often, clients don’t realize that design involves very many variables and is the designer’s task to find the right balance between all of them in order to make them most suitable for their purpose.
If you are a client and you start a professional relationship with a designer, try to keep this in mind. Trust the designer, tell him “WHAT you need”. If there’s something you feel is wrong, tell him what do you feel, but don’t tell him what to do and how to solve it. It would be like telling your doctor what the diagnosis on your disease is instead of telling him where it hurts. It would be like telling the surgeon where to cut on the surgery table. If you pick a designer because you have seen his work and you think is very good, then don’t forget he will always find the way to find the best solution for your project, and he will have in consideration all of the factors that are important for the best projection of your business concept. It’s just as easy as this: you set the target and hold the bow and we will hit the bullseye.
