Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for…Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace…Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali. The complicated process is worth money. That’s what clients pay for.
Hari Rajagopal
on 21 Apr 10I find this true for every profession where one has to deal with people. Because People are made up of this kind of stuff – egos, expectations, aspirations, tastes etc.
Viljami
on 21 Apr 10This is a good one. Make’s me actually feel quite comfortable to hear this from someone else’s mouth.
Sometimes I’d hope that clients would appreciate more what we are doing and trust us as professionals & experts of our own field.
Of course there are also such clients, but in my own experience, there aren’t really many people who understand what and why designers do what they do.
Neil B
on 21 Apr 10Never thought of it like that, I think those difficult situations helped with my development, it also gets boring having a client that agrees with everything you say :)
Wayne
on 21 Apr 10I’ve hired designers. If they come in and think they’re going to get paid to “negotiate terrain” then I’ll fire them. A consulting designer’s goal is to provide a solution to a user’s problem, in a better way than can be done by the internal staff. Yes, there may be internal business context as a constraint, but solution must be so good and so fiercely customer-centric that it easily sells itself. If, instead, the design reflects “what I think I can sell inside this organization” as seen by an OUTSIDER of that organization, then it has lost its customer-focus and I might as well have provided the design using internal people.
Scott
on 21 Apr 10“I think the designer needs to be involved every stage of the complicated negotiation between the clients, their expectations, tastes, aspirations, marketplace concerns etc. The designer needs to be ever present because, inevitably, at some side meeting, something will be suggested that will totally destroy the form of the logo.”
This is why meetings and projects get so damn large in corporate-world. Everyone thinks they must be involved all the time. Nothing can be decided without everyone’s input and nothing can be discussed without everyone present.
It’s no surprise that a designer thinks that the designer needs to be involved in every stage, just like it should be no surprise that a marketer thinks Marketing should be ever present, a systems architect thinks the systems architect should be ever present, and a customer service VP thinks his department must ever present.
””I think the [my role] needs to be involved every stage of the complicated negotiation between the clients, their expectations, tastes, aspirations, marketplace concerns etc. The [my role] needs to be ever present because, inevitably, at some side meeting, something will be suggested that will totally destroy the [project].”
Amber Shah
on 22 Apr 10I agree with Hari that this phenomenon does not at all seem limited to designers. Maybe it is just that it hits designers harder, people who are artists and think that they can come impose their grand designs on businesses who will just delight in their genius. And of course it doesn’t work that way. While probably everywhere, this definitely happens in software development, where bright-eyed programmers think they are going to get to solve interesting problems with elegent solutions and well-designed code, and what they really get is an amalgam of old crappy code to dig through all day and unrealistic deadlines. Whenever you delight in your craft, leave it to business to suck all the fun out.
Mushu
on 26 Apr 10@Wayne, I’ve hired people like you. BTW you’re fired, don’t bother coming in tomorrow.
This discussion is closed.