4.5 ways to annoy your designer

We all know that great design can make or break your marketing materials. It’s alright having an awesome message, but if the design doesn’t cut through or appeal to your target audience then you’ve wasted your wonderful words.

This month’s PMG blog gives tips on how to get the best out of your designer, but the flipside of that is how to royally p!ss them off and risk not getting the best out of their talents. Here are four shortcuts to getting vanilla design (and a reputation as an undesirable client!).

1.     A design brief that’s light on detail

While designers need freedom to use their creative talents, they need to do this with a decent idea of what the campaign or piece of marketing is hoping to achieve and who it’s aimed at. Without knowing this they can’t do the best job for you. So telling your designer the marketing is aimed at everyone is a fast-track to design that’s faltering, not focused.

2.     “Be creative,”

You might think this is the best instruction to give a designer, but it’s right up there among the worst. All designers want to be creative, but a lack of direction will make it hard for them to hone down a visual style that you approve of. You’re setting them up for failure if you give no clue whatsoever about what you’re looking for. Ideally you’d have some reference images of things you like, or things you definitely don’t so your designer can narrow down the possibilities.

3.     “I don’t like that!”

Design is subjective so not everyone will like everything. What matters is whether your target audience will like/notice/respond to the marketing asset you’re creating. But more than that, saying you don’t like something without being able to articulate exactly what you don’t like and why leaves the designer clueless about how to make it better for you. When you’re giving feedback, do try to be specific so they have a clear idea of what needs changing in the next iteration.

4.     When clients become designers

Worse than no specific feedback is the total opposite, which often leads clients to try to be designers, without actually being designers. Designers just love to be told what colours to use, how elements on a page should be arranged and what font would be better! If that’s likely to be your approach, perhaps an online graphic design package like Canva would be a better route than engaging a designer, then you can make all of the choices yourself.

The final (0.5!) bit of bad etiquette when working with designers is one we’re all familiar with – “Can I have it this afternoon?”! As we outlined in PMG blog Two out of three aint bad, you have to choose two from great quality, low cost and speed. If you want it this afternoon you’re massively compromising on quality – and assuming your designer doesn’t have anything better to be doing than patiently waiting for your call. And that’s not really the way to build a relationship with a skilled creative who can massively increase the chances of your next marketing campaign being a success.

So, what would you add to the list?