Listen to your client (but only about his business)

Your clients are running successful businesses, which is why it is likely that they know more about their business then we ever could. At the same time, your clients don’t know enough about design, which is why they hire us as designers.

Our client knows his business better than we do

As designers we’re very close to being visual marketeers. Having a background, or at least basic knowledge in marketing is good advice to any businessman, but especially for designers. Armed with such a background, we may feel inclined to tell our clients how their business works. A huge mistake, we should always avoid.

Clients are professionals in their field. They know way more about that field than we can research for the design project. We need to stop talking and start listening to them to learn from their knowledge. This reduces the time we need to invest into research and gives us more information than our research could ever reveal.

Asking questions is best practice in the first client meetings. Voicing opinions should be off the table if we’re not specifically asked for them.

Our client knows less about design than we do

But when it comes to design, we should stop listening and start talking. The fact that we were hired by our clients is proof enough that our clients need our knowledge and skillset, which is why we are giving him a disservice if we design according to our clients wishes.

We should design according to our client’s needs. And sometimes, that means, we need to overrule the client and make him understand why the design we propose is the better choice than the design he wants.

In a nutshell: Take the business knowledge of your client and combine it with your design knowledge to create the best results.