Design Education: What do designers really need to know?

As I consider returning to school for an MFA in graphic design, I have been assessing what I have learned in 13 years as a professional designer as well as what I have yet to learn... and I came across this blog post by David Airey about what design schools can do better.

The client management theme resonated with me the most. Below are some comments I wholeheartedly agree with.

“Students should be given projects where the teacher plays the role of a difficult client — someone without imagination and the ability to articulate what they want. It can be a huge challenge to isolate the core message of a design project, and knowing how to handle those clients, and keep them happy, can be even harder.”
— NEIL KOWALEWSKI

“...there have only been a few courses where the outline simulated a real-world design we might have to do for a client, or the handling of any other sort of client alteration, suggestion, or complaint. Of the few that had done that, I learned the most.”
— CRYSTAL

“If you don’t know how to interact with clients, or even close a sale, your talents are going to be restricted. No clients = no designing.”
— ALAN ANDERSON

What do you think design students need to know? Is this something that can be taught in school?

collage by illustrator Eleanor Wood

Visual Design Brief

This is a great article by Joe Duffy of Duffy & Partners about visual design briefs—what they are and how to use them.

Joe defines the visual brief as:

"It is quite literally a collage that paints a picture of the world we'd like to design in. After we've agreed with the client on the written brief that outlines all the goals and parameters, we start bringing it to life, visually. Please note, this is not a so called 'mood board,' where planners tear out pictures from People magazine to try to evoke an emotional understanding of the target audience. It's rather a piece of art, made up of the scrap we designers collect, shoot, draw and edit, along with our clients, to make sure of two things: 1) We're on the same page before we start designing and 2) we've created a filter through which design decisions on type, layout, color, photo/illustration style, etc., can be considered and evaluated."

As I start working on the branding of Ultimate Guru Music, I plan to try my first visual brief and see how I can integrate it into my client relations process. It's always good to have more tools to deal with clients during the branding process.

I also like Joe's admonition to use visual briefs to engage the client in the design process, because it eliminates the element of surprise. And according to Joe, surprising clients after much design work has already been done is a bad idea. It's best to get buy-in from the client on the visual and verbal in every way possible except the actual designing. Collaboration with clients, after all, should be welcome not feared.

Choosing an illustrator

I was assigned a delightful project—a dating book about how girls can hook up with European guys. How fun! I immediately imagined something young, girly, flirty, and ooh, la la!

I went font shopping immediately. Buffet Script, Buttermilk, Mr Canfields, Narziss! I was in script heaven.



My excitement was soon tempered by my workload. We're busy with a lot of projects in all stages of production, so I was a little relieved to hear a week later that the author had decided to hire an illustrator for the cover. We have not had this happen before. It seemed like a good idea...

The author chose the illustrator, and this—in retrospect—is where the trouble began. Where I was visualizing feminine and flirty art with impressionistic brush strokes and bright colors...

... instead the author chose an (super talented) illustrator whose style is monochromatic, masculine, and highly photorealistic. It was at this point that I should have told her that this particular artist just would not work for her book's genre. Instead I tried to be diplomatic and critiqued the content of the artwork instead of the choice of illustrator. Big mistake.

Over the next few days the author and I went back and forth about whether to feature a woman (no), whether to have a 'European' element (yes), and whether to use a feminine type treatment (no). But the look-and-feel had been set, and no amount of 'corrective' suggestions on my part could alter that.

Long story short, I rang the alarm bell on the project too late—the artwork is almost complete and our catalog deadline is less than two weeks away. The whole situation blew up in my face—the author feels misled and trusts us even less than she did at the outset, and the book will probably have cover art that is too masculine and stiff for its genre. Sigh.

For future projects, as a company we've decided to add a clause in our contract to stipulate that we need to approve illustrators used for cover work. And personally, I now get that the choice of illustrator is a crucial decision that has unalterable consequences for the design. Live and learn.

The following comps were created just in case the author heeded our concerns and decided to give us a chance to develop something we felt was more genre appropriate in a rush. No such luck.

Surprise flowers!

My serial killer novelist not only chose a cover (the first one shown here) as is, but she also sent me 'thank you' flowers on Friday. What a great way to start the weekend!

New novel

This author came to the design process with a specific look in mind. I've learned that the best way to facilitate the design process in these types of situations is to make sure the client is involved every step of the way and to make sure to get their buy-in throughout the process.

In this case, the author chose the seascape from a lightbox of images I selected; she chose the silhouette of the man from another lightbox; we worked on creating the reflection together, etc. While it would have been more personally satisfying to explore different concepts for this novel, doing so would have just frustrated this client. In the end, she is satisfied and the cover is solid.